SCOLND ON SUNDAY REPORTS

Iain Morrison: Jackson, king of the new crop

Published Date: 20 March 2011
By Iain Morrison
Stand-off one of few positives in dismal run
ON THE face of things Leo Tolstoy may not appear to have much to say on the subject of Scotland's recent rugby campaign, but his classic Anna Karenina opens with the memorable line: "All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

The same is true of rugby teams because all successful sides follow a tried and tested formula with just an occasional tweak, whereas failure comes in many and various guises. After a very encouraging 2010, this Six Nations has been one of failure for Scottish rugby despite the encouragement of the last two showings at Twickenham last weekend and Murrayfield yesterday afternoon... second half only. In fact the huge strides this squad has taken over the last two weekends only highlighted the paucity of those early performances all the more vividly.

There were some positives and the emergence of Ruaridh Jackson as a credible rival to Dan Parks is undoubtedly the best of them. The Glasgow stand-off came of age in London and was even better yesterday, when his confidence took another huge leap. Ahead of the final weekend Max Evans headed the "opponents beaten" column across this championship. He may yet become Scotland's answer to Shane Williams, although he has work to do, and Sean Lamont looks increasingly comfortable at inside centre. Richie Gray's potential is as obvious as it is unlimited but that's about that. Over the course, this squad under-performed.

Going into this tournament the team boasted a five-from-six record so three home wins were a reasonable goal, especially in a championship that has been short on quality. Instead the Scots lost four of their matches and they found a bewildering variety of ways to do so...

• FRANCE 34-21: A total of 14 missed tackles and a penalty try conceded by the scrum.

• WALES 6-24: Blind panic and hopeless indiscipline with five penalties in 13 minutes.

• IRELAND 18-21: Farcical defence and a toothless attack.

• ENGLAND 22-16: The set piece disintegrates with six scrum and four lineout turnovers.

• ITALY 21-8: Same old first 40, much improved second half.

There are a few lessons to be learned, but the obvious one is that Scotland need everyone playing at or close to their full potential or the team is on a hiding to nothing. For two home matches the side fell so far short of 2010 standards you wanted to ask for fingerprints just to check their ID.

But let's not play the blame game. No, on second thoughts, let's play the blame game. All those players who made unforced errors and conceded soft penalties under the referee's nose need to hold their hands up. Andy Robinson talks about referees' decisions when he should be addressing his team's shortcomings.

Graham Steadman and every player were jointly responsible for the shambolic defence and, finally, many of the match officials were guilty of being mostly useless and Peter Allan, the Scottish touchie in Cardiff, was particularly incompetent.

This Scotland squad needs to start matches well because they don't have a lot of tries in them and so they find it difficult to chase games once the opposition opens up a sizeable gap. When Scotland fell behind to cheap scores against France, Wales and Ireland they struggled. When they scored first against England and were level pegging at the break, the Scots made a match of it.

There were a wide variety of reasons behind Scotland's disappointing start but, if we want to condense all the issues into one neat compartment for easy consumption, then the scrum is a good place to start if only for the psychological damage it does to the team going backwards.

If scrum coach Massimo Cuttitta has a performance-related pay deal then the SRU's money worries are over. His speciality was a disaster for four of the five matches so the cheery Italian must owe Murrayfield plenty. The writing was on the wall in Paris where, despite conceding a stone a man in weight, the French forwards pushed the Scots about like bouncers at chucking out time.

The question most fans want answered is why it took until England and Italy for all that grit and tenacity to come to the fore?

Against England the Scots ripped into the tackle and threw themselves into the breakdown like men possessed. Against Italy they attacked with verve and purpose and could have added to their tries.

Had they played to potential every time they took the field this squad would probably be celebrating three home wins. Instead they have just one and a heap of hard work awaiting them over the summer.

This article was posted on 20-Mar-2011, 07:46 by Hugh Barrow.