Azzurri late show a warning for Toony

win over the Azzurri saw Blair Kinghorn claim a hat-trick with Stuart Hogg and Chris Harris also diving over for the Scots.

But coach Townsend says they were given a wake-up call by the late Italian rally after Simon Berghan had been yellow carded.

And he wants an improvement for next week’s showdown with champions Ireland.

After what was only Scotland’s third opening-day Six Nations win, Toony said: “Perhaps it’s not a bad thing, we are now coming up against the second-best team in the world so it’s feet on the ground and that’s good for us.

“We have started with a solid win and scoring five tries is a credit to the players.

“The challenge next week will be huge and we’ll absorb the game plan and understand what we have to do better.

“I’m not too concerned and I have to credit Italy because they ran the ball well in the last 15. We were a man down, their passes began to stick and perhaps we weren’t smart enough.

“We didn’t react to that quickly enough and that’s disappointing. But even in that period, we had a disallowed try for Stuart Hogg and I can’t believe it wasn’t given.

“Blair also took his tries superbly and Finn Russell had one of his best Scotland games.”

Kinghorn’s treble was Scot land’s fi rst in the Championship since Iwan Tukalo’s hat-trick against Ireland back in 1989.

And the Edinburgh wing said: “I’m delighted with the result in front of another capacity crowd. We dug in at the end.

“Credit to our boys. They’re awesome and credit to Italy because they brought everything to the game at the end.

“We took our chances when they were available and it was brilliant to get the tries.”