Wherefore art thou, Scotland?

Though it’s often misunderstood, when Juliet opines from her balcony, “wherefore art thou, Romeo?” she’s not asking where the lad’s run off to, perhaps wondering if he can pick her up a Big Mac on the way back, but rather why he is who he is. The problem for Juliet is of course that she’s in love with a Montague; the enemy of her Capulet father. The problem for Scotland rugby fans is they’re in love with Scotland; the enemy of all that is joyful and virtuous in the world.

Scotland fans are often wilfully naïve of rugby because naivete is the only guaranteed solace from reality. And this year has provided reams of data for the sporting sociologist because there was no shortage of fans in pubs and in print eagerly suggesting that this could be Scotland’s year.

So far, so typical. This happens all the time. It’s happened right here. But this year seemed stranger because it never seemed to make any sense.

This might be Scotland’s greatest group of players in a generation, but it’s basically the same ones they had last year – and they fluffed that.

Oh yes they did: last year was Scotland’s best chance in two decades to win the Six Nations.

A good group of players, a rock-solid defence, transitioning opposition, and crucially, empty stadia when they travelled.

And they couldn’t get it done, because this squad of players lack the nous to perform when it counts.

Beating France at the death in 2021 may well have been impressive, but the game meant nothing. Scotland’s tournament was over. By far the more important game was Ireland, and Scotland fear Ireland the way props fear vegetables.

The Autumn wasn’t bad, but in a very good year for the Northern Hemisphere, it was Scotland who looked the shakiest. Beating Australia looks good on paper, but everyone beat Australia. Vengeance against Japan at 29-20 sounds nice, but Ireland threw 60 past them and only conceded 5.

Ireland also beat the All Blacks, and a week later the French stopped playing like “France” and started playing like FRANCE and wiped the floor with the Kiwis. Did anyone who watched those matches really think Scotland were in a position to contend with these teams?

Wilful naivete.

This year’s Six Nations, some would have you believe, started well. Scotland beat England and that’s always a welcome result. But England were very bad. Scotland’s performance was nothing to get excited about, indeed Scotland’ performance barely lasted more than twenty minutes.

But what’s in a performance? A win by any means still smells as sweet.

So on to Wales. Wales, as everyone now realises, are terrible at rugby. If there are still any who feel it unfair to label their success last year as a Jam Slam, 2022 has some notes for you. And still, Scotland couldn’t rise to the occasion in Cardiff. Weeks later, even Italy would.

Next up France, and far too many people who should know better were happy to write this off as a valiant loss to the best side in the world. Excuse moi, mais non. France were, for sure, at times pretty damn great to behold. But in this case “at times” means “for about fifteen unconnected minutes over the course of the game” because for three quarters of it, they were barely awake. And that’s not really a criticism, because they didn’t need to be awake to slap Scotland silly.

Then there was Italy. A team Scotland should have thrashed. Do not let their joyous win against Wales deceive you. We’ve already covered this: Wales are terrible at rugby. There’s a reason they’re still wheeling out Alun Wyn Jones to play at 150 years old.

Scotland should beat Italy every time they meet and it shouldn’t even be close. Everyone else does it. Why are Scotland so uniquely suited in Tier One rugby to making Italy look like contenders? Scotland fell off this game so hard and fast Italy almost won the damn thing.

It ended against Ireland at the Aviva. And the same thing that happens every time it’s Ireland at the Aviva happened again. Scotland stood surrounded by three stands and a greenhouse filled with Dubliners and defecated in full view of the entire world.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. Scotland is something else entirely.

So what’s the problem, or more accurately since we don’t have all day, what are some of them?

Well when so much of your gameplan is predicated on the notion that Finn Russell gonna do Finn Russell things, you really have to hope he does that, because as was made staggeringly clear when he was replaced by Blair Kinghorn against Ireland, there is no Plan B.

Russell had a terrible tournament. Was he out of shape? Would that be a more palatable explanation than the popular, “he doesn’t care” cliché? Well given that we should have moved on from that nonsense by now, it seems more likely.

He wasn’t alone though. Stuart Hogg has been terrible. He shouldered a lot of unfair criticism for not catching a poor Chris Harris pass against France but made plenty of his own mistakes to match, none more galling than an indecisive and ultimately selfish pelt for Ireland’s corner when he had three – THREE! – players inside him all ready to score. That would have been 14-12. That would have been a different game. The captain butchered it, and not for the first time.

Quite how Kyle Steyn got two games in a row on the wing is a mystery, but it seems unlikely to happen again given how badly he played in them.

Zander Fagerson remains a penalty waiting to happen, Ali Price has been running hot and cold, Darcy Graham seems determined to run into every opposition player on the field, Duhan Van der Merwe has all the higher rugby brain function of a PlayStation 2 character…

Too harsh? Perhaps but we need to be exactingly clear on this. This was Scotland’s worst Six Nations performance in years and the only reason they weren’t dead last is because there are two teams in the world called Italy and Wales. Wales, you’ll recall, are terrible at rugby.

There are no positives to take from this tournament, and scrambling about in the dirt to find them is demeaning. It was terrible. Scotland were terrible, and the first step in rectifying that is accepting that it’s true.

Stuart Hogg’s petulance in the post-match conference in Dublin and Gregor Townsend’s stated “delight” that Scotland had a good week of training despite the final result suggests they have yet to do so.

But if failure is the best tutor, Scotland should be fielding PhDs in the future. First up, they can never again afford a Jamie Ritchie injury. The man must be protected at all costs. Change the laws of physics if necessary, because it has been made starkly clear that this pack doesn’t work without him holding it together.

More than that, make him captain when he returns.

It’s presumably difficult for any Fifteen to command the game from the rear of the field, but Stuart Hogg has shown time and again over years now through brainless decision making, petulant snipes at teammates, robotic post-match interviews and the collapse of Scotland’s Forward game that he can’t do it all. Ritchie is going to be around long after Hogg has gone and leads by example, bloodying his brow at the first opportunity in the thick of the action as his position dictates. He can be the rock this team builds on for the next two World Cup cycles.

France spent their game against Scotland playing silly-billy in their lineouts, holding the man up for far too long and after Scotland three times in a row conceded penalties for taking the man in the air, a change should have come. That it didn’t shows no one told them to, because there was no one with enough knowledge of the Forward game and natural authority to do it. The penalties continued. Would things have been different if the Scotland captain was actually in the lineout and knew exactly what was going on? One can only hope so.

Far beyond the lineout however, discipline has been all but absent all tournament. Again this speaks to lack of leadership. It shows a failure to adapt to (and influence) referees, and a breakdown of very basic rugby skills. The game may be complicated to the average person on the street; these men live it and have no excuses for not following the laws.

Of course this lack of discipline extends off the field as well. Led by the supposed leaders of this team in Hogg, Russell, and Price, a group of players violated the players’ rules (that were agreed by players; not coaches) and decided that scraping a win against Italy was worthy of a night out on the town.

If you’re minded to think there’s nothing so terribly bad about rugby players having a few beers after a game there are plenty who would agree with you, but the bubble rules were in place and either these players simply had no care for the wishes of their teammates who had voted against nights out, or they felt unable to openly disagree with them.

If your captain feels he doesn’t know how to speak to the coaches or the players, once again we’re back at a failure of leadership.

And what of Gregor Townsend; where does this leave him?

Well he’ll have eighteen months to turn it around because the SRU seem unlikely to dump their coach this close to a World Cup. But none of this looks good for him.

If the captain is leading this sort of ill-discipline, there’s a very real problem at the root of the team and ultimately the coach is where the buck stops. Perhaps he has a group of “stars” who think the rules don’t apply to them; it’s his job to ensure they do. Alternatively, perhaps he’s been too heavy-handed in the control he exerts over them and they felt they had no option but to rebel.

But to paraphrase Dylan Hartley, it’s not the 80s anymore. This is not an amateur game. It is a professional sport. This team is staggeringly unprofessional and either it’s the head coach’s fault for allowing that to happen, or simply his responsibility to fix it. In either case, public scrutiny for once is warranted.

Scotland can be better than this, yes. But the stark truth is that right now they are not, and there have been no signs of anything but regression. The poor results this year are a direct reflection of the poor performances Scotland have turned in. This is a shell of the squad that was, and the squad that was didn’t win enough when it mattered either.

Scotland’s future can only be glanced at through the murkiest of mirrors and it looks absolutely grim. Far too often this year they have reminded us of the Bad Old Days of a decade ago and beyond. When they were far too easily seen as the worst Tier One nation in the world.

Whether you’re minded to say that today depends largely on how you view Italy, and mercifully, the existence of Wales.

Wales are terrible at rugby.

But Scotland are something else entirely.

The post Wherefore art thou, Scotland? appeared first on Scottish Rugby Blog.