Steve Scott considers Scotland’s now-crucial Six Nations clash with Italy in Rome

There’s no standing still; you’re either moving forward, or falling back. Bill Parcells, the famed NFL coach, was a hard taskmaster, but he was absolutely right. Just three weeks ago, we thought Scottish Rugby was moving forward. There was the usual element of wishful thinking involved here, the optimism that sprouts inexplicably in Scotland before each Six Nations Championship.

Inexplicably, because you’d think we would all know better by now. However, even this professed and hardened cynic was caught up in it this year.

Why did we think we were moving forward? Since the wooden spoon whitewash of the last Six Nations, Glasgow won the PRO12 – the first cross-border trophy won by a Scottish team since the valedictory 1999 Five Nations Championship.

Then there was a decent summer of World Cup prep followed by a tournament where most observers thought Scotland played pretty decently, and they certainly got very close to a shock quarter-final win over Australia.

After October was over, Scottish Rugby was looking pretty pleased with itself. Both home Six Nations games sold out early – the France game sometimes takes a while – and there was a genuine belief the team were going places.

We weren’t alone. Outside these borders where the team is seen with less dark-blue tinted glasses, plenty neutral observers thought Scotland’s perennial promise would manifest in a competitive team this year.

Well, instead a defeat in Rome this weekend – and Scotland are 4.5 point underdogs – would leave the national game lurching back into crisis.

It would be their 10th successive loss in the championship, the worst for 60 years. Although the team deny it blind, morale has to have been affected by this, and there seems to be a mental frailty about his team that Vern Cotter seems at his wits’ end to solve.

The crowds keep coming to Murrayfield for the internationals but the atmosphere is so moribund that we have a social media campaign sprouting to try to find a song for the massed ranks to sing to try to get them proactive in helping the team.

Domestically, the pro teams are splintering as money from the French and English leagues siphon off the best talent even before their signed contracts are completed. Glasgow’s title would appear to have happened in a short window now to be closed because of a relative lack of resources.

It’s on a real knife-edge. If Scotland win in Rome this weekend, I’d fully expect them to win at least one more game in this championship, perhaps two. I do believe them when they say that getting over the winning line at last will open the floodgates.

But equally, defeat makes France in a fortnight look like a mental test beyond the battered confidence of this squad, and going to Ireland seeking to avoid a second successive whitewash, no matter how beaten up they are, is no one’s idea of a reasonable assignment.

Rome is that important. Win, and our optimism will be at least partvalidated. Lose, and there’s not even a pin prick of light at the end of this dark tunnel.

The occasion audience

Wales was in a ferment last week, with Cardiff police chiefs claiming that middle-aged rugby fans are now harder to handle than football fans at Millennium Stadium games.

I have some sympathy with this view. The press box in the Millennium is virtually unfettered from the fans, most of whom spend the game visiting toilet facilities or the bar in an endless vicious cycle. My laptop last week was subjected to beery faces and sticky fingers, one of which handily deleted half of my on-the-whistle story.

But although the drunkenness is now legion in Cardiff, it’s still the last place you get real rugby fans. The stadiums elsewhere seem to be filled mostly with tourists.

It’s because the Six Nations has become an occasion, rather than a sporting event.

So far, but for bits of Wales-Scotland, the sporting part of it has been absolutely rank-awful. But the tickets sell, and the hotels bump up their prices four-fold (my £180 room in Cardiff retails for £44 any other week).

Even for those actually interested in rugby rather than just “being at the rugby”, the 6N social side has become almost more important than the actual championship.

I love the traditions of the championship and visiting the five great cities of Europe on a two-year cycle. But I love the game more, and it’s in danger of becoming a sideshow.

Defeat makes France in a fortnight look like a mental test beyond the battered confidence of this squad

What could be...

Super Rugby restarts this week, with added Argentine and Japanese teams. The contrast to the old world game being played in Europe could hardly be more stark.

You’ll see quick, skilful, attractive rugby. There will still be scrums and mauls like we get here, but there’s other stuff as well, like runners in space.

It’s a different mindset, significantly and importantly in different weather, but we could have it too with a little imagination and courage.

Duncan Weir drops the goal in Rome in 2014 to secure Scotland’s only win in the Six Nations in the last two and a half years.