The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Laidlaw insists morale is still high in Scotland camp ahead of f Azzurri clash -
Captain Laidlaw admits frustration is evident after winless run, but 100% focus required for Rome
Scotland need only tip the precarious balance of being an unlucky team or a winning team to reap the rewards in Rome this weekend, believes skipper Greig Laidlaw.
The captain is understandably weary at having to explain the way the Scottish squad is retaining belief and confidence in the wake of the losing streak of nine games in the RBS 6 Nations.
There’s even those pointing to the similar situation last year when Scotland seemed poised to turn promise into positives on the scoreboard, yet lost to the Italians on a calamitous afternoon at Murrayfield, making the wooden spoon and whitewash became almost inevitable.
Yet morale is far from rock bottom, insists Laidlaw.
“People can see how far we have come as a team,” he said.
“We are not far away and need to keep performing well. When that happens it is going to tip the balance.
“It is not difficult to convince the team, they understand we are not playing badly.
“We are also playing against good teams. Wales away is a tough place to go and win, while England took their couple of opportunities. If we had taken ours we could have tipped the balance and won that game.
“There’s definitely frustration. But morale is certainly not low.”
But Laid law did concede that the major issue with getting the win now was “the top two inches”.
“The brain is a powerful thing ,” he said. “We need to concentrate as a team of 15.
“I’m the head of the team, as captain, but I need the other 14 right behind me and for us all to be on the same page.
“We’ve got to play with confidence, 100%. I think we are playing with confidence and we’re playing well, we simply need to squeeze a little bit more out of each other to get over the line.
“Whether that’s our defence being rock solid for 80 minutes or stopping things like breaking out of a maul blind and coughing up the ball.
“Just tidy up those little instances from around the game, if we do that, we’ll be in a good frame of mind. We’ve got to play with confidence, especially the strike runners. We need to give these boys licence to go and play well.”
But as is common in what is perennially typecast as the wooden spoon decider, Italy have designs on this game as winnable just as much as Scotland have.
“They’ll be stuffy, trying to target this game as a win, clearly,” agreed Laidlaw.
“Strong scrum, strong lineout, that’s pretty much what we expect and they’ll look to play off the back of that set-piece as well.
“We understand Italy will have confidence in themselves to win this game but we have to take that from them. They shipped a fair few points at home last time so we think we can see opportunities if we play properly, we can cause them problems.”
Scotland have also won close games twice in Italy in the last two years, as well as the thrashing at Murrayfield in the World Cup warm-up, while losing last year’s traumatic Six Nations meeting, when Laidlaw had to watch from the bench after being replaced as his team unravelled in the late going.
“That was probably more painful to me than anyone else, being captain,” he recalled.
“It’s tough but it drives you forward to make you a better person and a better player, and it will drive us to win this weekend, hopefully.
“We’ve won two close ones there recently and there’s no reason why we can’t again. Italy are a stuffy team and they’ll be in the game, I’m sure, late on.
“But if we stick to our guns, back our skill set, we think we can win. There’s a lot riding on the game and we understand that.
“The good thing is, there’ s three games to go and if we can get a positive performance that brings us that win, return home to Murrayfield after a week off against France.
“This tournament’s still tight, there’s nobody really that far ahead.”