Must-win for Scots – as alternative doesn’t bear thinking about

Six Nations 2026: Italy v Scotland

Venue: Stadio Olimpico, Rome Date: Saturday, 7 February Time: 14:10

Fair play to Scottish Rugby – not words you often hear, it’s true. Fair play to them for their enthusiasm in putting players and coaches in front of cameras and around tables, fair play for all the access and all the opportunity to pick brains before the Six Nations. If the championship was decided on such things, the Scots would be contenders. Favourites, possibly.

The other week we had six different players put in front of us on a loop on the same afternoon. Radio, television, social media, newspapers, podcasts. They did the lot, with a smile. But…

Everybody’s bored of an unchanging narrative. The players have had it up their tonsils with the fighting talk, knowing that only deeds and not words are going to get the job done, beginning in Rome on Saturday.

There are some wonderful communicators in this Scotland team but, in the politest sense, they’re fed up communicating and are just desperate to start delivering. They can’t say they’re going to deliver, of course, because they’ve never delivered. They think they’re capable, but they haven’t proven it. They’re all in a rugby no-man’s land.

These past weeks, in their search for truth, they’ve walked the line between self-belief and self-criticism. They know that, in part, they can be brilliant and, in other part, they can be brutal. They can dominate chunks of a game with their excellence and then contrive to lose that same game with their mental wobbles.

To hear them engaging in psychoanalysis you could be forgiven for thinking that they’ve spent as much prep-time for Rome in therapy as they have on the training ground. These are fine players, almost in pain with the frustration of not being able to kick on with their country as most of them are doing with their clubs.

From the outside, it would be understandable if you thought Scotland are fancying their chances this year, what with Glasgow Warriors tearing it up in the United Rugby Championship and Champions Cup. There are nine Warriors in the starting line-up against Italy and another five on the bench.

Understandable, but ignorant of the way things are. The fatalism, the quarter of a century of not contending, the grinding down of expectation. Hope lives – as it must – but there isn’t a more realistic bunch of supporters in this tournament than the Scots. When they hear outsiders describing them as bullish they tend to wonder what planet these people are living on.

This is not a golden generation of Scottish players, although it has been described that way. It might be a golden generation of Scottish backs, but not forwards. The feeling is that there is more in them, though. And that Townsend is not the man to get it out of them.

In blowing a 21-0 lead against Argentina in November, they were booed at Murrayfield. Townsend cites huge crowds at their home games – in the autumn, more than 50,000 against the United States and more than 60,000 against Tonga – as proof that the fans are still with the team.

And they are, but more and more of them are not with Townsend. He answered the story midweek linking him with a move to Newcastle at the end of his current contract in 2027 with talk of an English newspaper plot to derail the team before the Calcutta Cup in a week’s time. This is not silly season, but it felt like it in that moment.

Pierre Schoeman spoke recently about the need for ruthlessness and he was right. In the championship a year ago Scotland were second only to France in terms of their average number of visits to their opponent’s 22. Their conversion rate from those visits was just 30% – they ranked fifth of the six nations in that regard.

In terms of allowing opponents into their own 22, Scotland were stingy and ranked first, the problem being that they conceded way too often – 40% of visits ended with a try for their rivals. Champions France conceded 26.8% of the time and for second-placed England it was 28.8%.

Their penchant for self-destruction has clearly been part of their preamble this time around. The need for more mental resilience has been a big theme.

Townsend has picked a team that, mostly, reflects form and a need to eliminate the boom-and-bust flakiness that can dog them. Blair Kinghorn was a surprise exclusion from the 23 but the Toulouse full-back is the embodiment of the gambler’s instinct that’s magnificent when it works and utterly ruinous when it doesn’t.

Again, Townsend has gone with form and fortitude. Kyle Steyn and Jamie Dobie have been excellent in all facets of their game for Glasgow this season, not just the glamorous stuff. So good, in fact, that few eyebrows were raised when they were both included in the starting team. They’ve been shoo-ins from a long way out.

Townsend has gone 5-3 on his bench, including Adam Hastings, a call that few saw coming. Hastings is having a strong season, but why have him on the bench instead of a utility man like Kyle Rowe or Ollie Smith?

Maybe the answer goes back to the Kinghorn situation. Finn Russell is the totem of this team but things can go wrong for him – as they did, badly, in Rome two years ago – and the best approach on days like that is to get him out of there.

If you have an option, that is. Hastings offers something of a safety net, you could argue. Steadier. More of a percentage player. Less of a gambler but still with the ability to play when the time is right.

With so many players talking about the work they’ve been doing to avoid the crash and burn moments they experience too often in games then something had to change. Rome will tell us much about what impact that change has brought.

It’s a game of momentous significance, a must-win opener if Scotland are to go into week two with title hopes and dreams still intact.

If this group is to achieve anything then they’d better get a move on. Of all the six nations in round one they have the highest average caps per squad and the highest average caps per starting XV.

Experience courses through them and with it comes age. In Rome, 10 of their 23 are in their 30s. Only four of Italy’s squad are in the same category.