Silly errors and missed tackles cost us. That and our inability to look after the ball.

What happened to Hogg? Looked off the ball, crowd was angry but possibly marginal?

POM clipped him with an elbow. A little naughty but not much more than that imo.

Forgot about Ritchie, good game. How old is he?

22. 23 in August.

MOM contribution?

No, it isn’t. I’m just saying that things used to be even worse, that’s all. It is incredibly frustrating that we never seem to learn to not be brainless, though.

Suspect you’re right about the Wales and England games. Still hopeful of an away win in Paris mind.

fudge. Big boy

Listed as 6ft 4 and about 17st. If he fills out a bit to closer to 17.5st he may find a long term home at 6 for Scotland.

I know I've had a bee in my bonnet for a while about our defence but we missed way too many tackles that could and should have been made, and for their second try a line break in the centre of the park shouldn't be a straight run in. I think that was a system failure as at 1st watch it looks like Kinghorn is covering wide left and Russell is covering right.

Our defence has been shite for years.
Useless plum Taylor can't fudge off quickly enough

It was at least a penalty. Worth a review for a card, late, no real attempt to tackle.

It was a.penalty and no more IMO.

Fairly down after this one.

It isn't the hope. It's that we could have won, but yet again didn't.

After loosing Hogg and conceding a couple of soft scores I was thinking "I know how this goes, our arses collapse". But that didn't happen.

At half time I thought we'd step up (or at least) maintain the performance. What I didn't think is that we'd regress a few years.

Disappointing. Hopefully we can banish some away demons in two weeks, but I won't hold my breath.

* plus the small matter of Ireland's first try being chalked off.

Is anyone convinced we're better than Cotter's final year?

Bafflingly inept. Worryingly, at home now too

It would have been.

If we had lost by <5 then it would bother me more. I get the game may have been different but there are lots of worrying signs from yesterday (and the odd bright spot).

I'm more concerned about the lack of defensive discipline, missed tackles and a defensive system that allows one line break to be a clear run to the line.

Cotter had us playing solid and entertaining stuff. 2 years ago we were better. Perhaps fair to say therefore that we have regressed.

But it's difficult to say if Cotter had he stayed on would have kept moving us forwards. There's a good chance he would have but difficult to say.

Agree on your home form worry. SA broke the spell in the Autumn, so nothing for others to fear. Need a big performance now in Paris to salvage the season cos we aint gonna get anything v England, or v Wales who have our number

Has anyone seen Weegie/Edinburgh01? normally would expect his tuppence worth in here...

https://www.rugbypass.com/news/analysis ... ral-attack

Some more good stuff from these guys.

Is Laidlaw slowing the ball down in the "red zone" a tactic or just Laidlaw being Laidlaw? Either way it cost us points and is f**king infuriating.

Just saw a replay. Disgraceful, knew what he was doing. Why wasn't the TMO on that?

POM also gave away as cynical a penalty you'll see mid way through the first half, 5m out, ref gave a pen for it but why was Laidlaw not in Poites ear, should have been a yellow.

So yes MOM

Saw the Hogg incident. Should be cited - not just late, but no attempt made to use his arms at all. Result: Ireland score a try and we lose our best player.

The second half yesterday was abysmal. As poor as its been at Murrayfield for quite a few years. But before the game most people were amazed we could still field what looked like a competitive side with that number crocked. 10 backrow players injured before kick off and then we lose Wilson at half time.

The Hogg incident really pissed me off. What should have been a clear penalty for us resulted in a try for them and us losing our talisman. It was not a freak injury, it was foul play and easily within the remit of the video ref to draw attention to it. FFS, they showed a reply of the ball brushing maitlands chest on the way out but didn't show the Hogg incident till half time. Bollocks.

Which reminds me, when Sam Johnson dived for the corner and hit the line, the ref was asking the video ref if Ireland had knocked it back or if Scotland had knocked it on, basically to see how to restart the game. Instead the video ref said "I'll show you a forward pass" to which he showed a forward pass earlier in the move. He was quite right, it was a forward pass, but the ref wasn't asking him about that but he showed him it anyway. The result was a scrum for Ireland 40 yards up the pitch with pressure relieved.
If he intervened here, why not for the Hogg incident?

Were we? 2 years ago we were utterly dominated by an Ireland side with Paddy Jackson at 10. We had barely any chances - but took pretty much every single one. Then survived through some amazing scramble defence, fortuitous interventions and plenty of Irish fuck-ups.

Yesterday in that first half we had them on the run - created so many chances but only took the one that came off an intercept. Meanwhile they manage to to score 2 tries while barely making it into our 22 - or even our half! That first half the game was there for the taking - we should have built a lead and been in s position to control the game in the second 40.

Set aside the coaching argument for a minute. The players available are still progressing. The production line coming beyond the squad is still progressing. Even with that though we're still picking from the narrowest talent pool of all the Tier 1 nations bar Italy so we need as close to our strongest 31 players traveling to Japan if we're going to be at our best.

I think sometimes we forget how far we've come in a relatively short space of time. From 2009 to 2015 we managed 2 wins against England, France, Ireland or Wales in 7 seasons. Last 3 years we've managed 5 wins against those teams including first victories in 10 years over England, France and Wales.

This is not some dim and distant memory either - almost half the 23 that played yesterday were also involved in the days when we could barely buy a win against a decent team in the Six Nations. Coming from such a low base there's still a massive amount of work and hard graft to put in before we can be proper title contenders.

Don’t wish to butt in to your national thread, but Poite did ask the TMO to look at a possible forward pass after Best raised it with him, and the TMO immediately said he’d show him the forward pass. So, obviously the TMO had already spotted it, but he only referred to it after Poite mentioned it. It’s quite clear on the audio on TV.

I think TotM nails it here. A few years ago I had reached the point of dreading the 6N coming around every year, bringing fresh pain and humiliation with it. I still have a bit of trepidation (as we’re never that far away from a total fudge-up) but we are not where we were then.

The cruel irony is that for years we depended on our pack to milk penalties for the odd win we did get. Now we have a set of backs as good as anyone else in the 6N, but we no longer have the forwards. If we had a White, a Hines, a Jeffrey or a Calder...

You make some good points.

I certainly don’t wish to pooh pooh the team or Scottish rugby given the progress that’s been made. As we are all too painfully aware, progress can be slow and arduous, as other teams are also looking to improve. We’ve come on leaps and bounds and to have all those injuries and still field a team like yesterday was great all things considered

What I was getting at regards Cotter and the relative strength of that team was their ability to control their own game. Ireland had a go that day and dominated certain aspects but we did to them that day what they did to us yesterday, by taking our chances. We had an ability under cotter (rout at HQ an exception) to play smart, adapting the game plan to suit and exposing weaknesses. Toonie managed the team well v England last year and V France too. Would be good to see that more often is all I’m saying.

You make fair points, but I can also see why people are looking back to the VC reign and trying to compare. Especially given the circumstances in which VC was replaced.

The same defensive lapses are there across the two reigns Whether it is missed tackles or systems that mean a missed tackle means there is little cover the flaws are still there.

Through VC and JOH and then GT we have improved on the attacking side. The defensive side is still lacking. To take the next positive step change the defence must improve. And that isn't just conceding less. It is the way we concede.

What I think will be a fair criticism of Townsend is of Wales handle us easily again without there being any plan B or not bringing subs on earlier.

Price needed more than 11 minutes.

Double post.

Not sure I agree with that. Many of our forwards were good yesterday. Too easy to say our forwards aren't good enough.

Wilson played well, we were poorer when he went off.

Strauss also played well though he missed 5 tackles.

OK, I’ve just watched the game. A few thoughts:

1. After what I’d read on here, I was waiting for a total horror show to unfold in the second half. Was slightly mystified when it never happened. Anyone who says that is the worst Scotland have played in years, or similar, must have a very short memory. We spent much of it on the back foot, but by and large we were organised, defensively sound (the try from the line break aside) and we kept trying to the end. There were even some good attacking moves, but generally Poite put a stop to those (see below).

2. It was our own fault we lost. One try from a dreadful mistake by Seymour (who played well otherwise) and two from dreadful defensive organisation. At least this should be fixable. It wasn’t so much missed tackles as players not being where they should have been. The second try was right after Kinghorn came on, which may have contributed. The first try, of course, should never have happened because of the clear foul on Hogg (with no arms used). This should certainly be reviewed by the citing guy.

3. Having said that, Poite didn’t do us a lot of favours in the second half. Having been pretty laissez-faire in the first, every time we went in the attack in the second he stopped us in our tracks by whistling for a minor technical infringement you feel he’d have ignored earlier on. Seriously, over and over again - a very marginal forward pass, ‘joining at the side’ where Ritchie perhaps had one foot in the wrong place, and two ‘knock ons’ - one of which I’m certain was Ireland trying to rip the ball, and the other of which never actually hit the ground. (I really hate this - the game ended with another one. Not every handling error is a knock on!)

4. Everyone was on about all of our handling errors. I haven’t seen the stats, but Ireland must have made almost as many as we did. They just weren’t as costly. Sometimes you get the breaks and sometimes you don’t. There was one move where an Irish fumble could have put us clean through, but the ball bounced badly for us twice, then sat up beautifully for the defender. The third Irish try also began with a bad handling error which bounced perfectly for the Irish player. The ball was wet and both teams were affected.

5. Losing Hogg was a blow, but Kinghorn shows us there is life after Hogg. The one fumble aside, he played very well and really should have been in from the start - Maitland looked rusty. If Hogg is out injured (hope not) then hopefully Darcy Graham will get a shot on the wing. Ritchie also had a fine game, as did Sam Johnson. These guys are the future, which is encouraging. Strauss also had a good game - certainly better than some he has served up.

Overall, it was a disappointing game - but mainly because it was there for the winning. We have played far worse, even in the last few years. If you think our basic skills were lacking, fair enough - but it’s not all that long since we were shipping three interception tries to Italy in the first 30 minutes, or losing a RWC pool game to England because De Luca couldn’t pick up the ball and flop over the line.

You just had to go and remind us all about De Luca’s fumble didn’t you

It’s the equivalent of going back to page 1 and looking at the team we used to put out. Remember how far we’ve come.

I think we can still take France and Wales

Yesterday when the EBC forced Inverplum and Eddie Butler on us, Andrew Cotter said on twitter he’s not in Edinburgh as he was doing England v France. Just realised that ITV have this match so Cotter effectively doing the commentary package (appreciate this will be 30 mins+ of the hour they allocate to the highlights show) but just another example of BBC thinking....

Cotter wasn't going to present the show instead of inverdale...