THERE IS A BRIGHT SIDE IF WE IRON OUT ERRORS

YOU never want to be in a situation, after the first game of the Six Nations, where you realise you need to rip up the game plan and start again. Luckily for Scotland, despite the defeat to England, they are not in that situation. There was so much that went well on Saturday. The Scots’ attitude was spot on, they were excellent when scrambling in defence and looked dangerous when the forwards flooded round the corner before the backs were released. What was frustrating was that our mistakes lost us the match. Vern Cotter picked a back row that gave us a chance. With John Barclay and John Hardie we effectively had two sevens up against a ball-carrying back row who are not the quickest. I thought that with low, chop tackles we could force turnovers but it seemed sometimes that Scotland were caught in two minds in defence about how high to tackle. The set-piece was strong but it needs to be better. Anything other that 100-per-cent success in the line-out is a failure and the Scots hit only 11 of their 14 in the game. In attack, we need to pick up the pace. I have never heard a referee call ‘use it’ as often as John Lacey did on Saturday. We also need to cut out the errors and create more sustained periods of pressure. Too many times we built a few quality phases through the forwards before managing to lose it. We had enough to win the game, but threw it away. Looking forward to Wales next week — they will likely play Justin Tipuric and Sam Warburton, so low tackles and strength over the ball at the breakdown will be key. Scotland are so close to putting it all together. They just need to polish certain aspects. The errors we saw on Saturday can be fixed but we must notch a win soon or it could become a worrying situation.

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