Stuart Bathgate: In the game of inches, a little luck could take Scotland a long way

WATCHING Scotland has always had its frustrations. If it’s unalloyed success you’re after, you would be well advised either to give up rugby altogether, or contemplate a switch of nationality.

But most of the time those frustrations have been offset by the occasional moment of magic: a victory every two or three games, a spirited but unlucky loss, or even the odd try – remember them? The problem right now is that we are getting nothing but frustration, nothing but dismal defeats, nothing to make us look forward to the rest of the Six Nations Championship with even a smidgeon of optimism. And not even the odd try.

The tournament remains one of the highlights of the sporting year, with an appeal well beyond the traditional rugby audience. But on Saturday, just a few hours after this year’s championship began, it was tempting to give up on the whole thing, to call up the IRB, and say “Sorry, can’t make it this year after all, see you in 2013”.

On Saturday, after defeat by a well-drilled but distinctly ordinary England side, there was only one crumb of comfort for some of us: the fact that we do not have tickets for the Wales game this weekend. We will still watch it on TV, but fearfully, from behind the sofa, remote control at hand, ready to press the off button if it all gets too much.

That’s the difference this year: the rapidity with which optimism has drained away. It’s not losing the opening game that has done that, because we’ve been used to that for quite a while now. It’s the manner in which it was lost.

Dan Parks’ ineptitude in defence allowed Charlie Hodgson to score the only try of the game, and the selection of the Cardiff stand-off was the target of severe criticism after the match, as it was before. There were individual failings in attack, too, notably by Ross Rennie when he was through on Ben Foden, while the refusal to allow Greig Laidlaw’s “try” was seen by many as a serious individual failing on the part of referee George Clancy. For others, the blame must rest with the coaches, and in particular, given the chronic failure to score tries, with attack coach Gregor Townsend.

Asked whether the coaches or players were to blame, Andy Robinson said the failure was a collective one. It was a reply he was obliged to make, but it was none the less plausible for that.

Townsend is inexperienced as a coach, but he did know how to score tries as a player, and he is perfectly able to articulate that knowledge when working with the present squad. He knows as well as anyone – indeed, far better than most – what the right options are in certain situations on the field of play. It’s not as if he told Rennie to hesitate for a split-second instead of passing.

Rennie was Scotland’s most impressive performer with the exception of David Denton. The fact that he was still culpable of such an error of judgment enhances the impression that the failings of this Scotland team are the result of a general lack of confidence in tight situations.

You can only hope that those failings are rectified before they can begin to have a debilitating effect on newcomers such as Denton. The No 8, making his first start on the eve of his 22nd birthday, was immense, but said he would gladly have swapped his man-of-the-match award for a win. He, too, thought the problems witnessed against England run throughout the team, and insisted that Scotland were not far from getting things right.

“It’s a cliché, but it’s a game of inches,” he said. “There were a lot of close calls out there for us and a lot of near misses, which seems to be always the case, but there are a lot of positives we can take out of this game. Our attacking play was good, so hopefully at the weekend we finish that off and start scoring some tries.

“We’re inches away from scoring a lot of tries. I think it will take one try and that will be us – get the momentum and get the try-scoring mentality. That’s just sometimes how it happens.”

Robinson is obliged to make one change for the Wales game due to Euan Murray’s refusal to play on a Sunday, and he will surely think long and hard before again selecting Parks ahead of Laidlaw, but he will not, after just one match, make drastic alterations. And he will not indulge in recriminations – we have that luxury as spectators, but it is one that as head coach he cannot afford.

Instead, he will soldier on, publicly declare his belief in his team, and hope that Denton is right when he says that one try could transform the outlook. It’s not much to go on, but it’s all he’s got. When you can’t engineer a win, you have to trust in luck, and Scotland are overdue a bit of that.