When you are playing Italy, one thing is guaranteed, they are going to come at you in the scrum and maul. Those are also two areas where Scotland struggled last week against Ireland, so putting those mistakes right could decide whether they have a chance of ending their losing streak in the RBS Six Nations Championship in Rome tomorrow.
As far as Allan Jacobsen is concerned, it is not a city with happy memories. Not only has he never played in a team that has won there, but it is also the place where he suffered the distress of getting the ball down over the line twice but being awarded neither score after the television match official could not see enough to convince him the prop had grounded the ball. Those decisions were the closest he has come to an international try.
“I don’t know if life me owes me a try but it would be nice,” he mused as he headed back to Italy for this weekend’s attempt to break his duck. “It’s just never happened. A couple of years ago I’m pretty sure I scored two but it wasn’t to be. The first one I was at the bottom of about ten bodies, so it was pretty difficult for them to see. It’s just the way it went that day. As far as I’m concerned I scored two tries, but nobody could see it.”
Anyway, as Geoff Cross, his propping partner, had already pointed out, scoring tries is no part of their job, particularly in Italy. When they travel to Rome, it is all about the grunt and aggression of the front row confrontation, a task made even harder when Martin Castrogiovanni, one of the world’s best props, made himself available only a month after breaking a rib.
“It’s been a frustrating campaign for everyone,” Jacobsen said. “The last few years we’ve always promised so much and not delivered. This year has gone down exactly the same road. I find it doubly frustrating because I genuinely think this team is better than the results have shown. All that matters is winning and losing, that’s what goes down in black and white.
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“This team is better than the results we’ve got. We’ve just got to nail down how to win games. Over the years I’ve played in a lot of Six Nations games and come off the pitch thinking we were not good enough to win, whereas this year things have been different.
“We’ve made bad decisions, but if we had not made as many mistakes [as we did] then we were in all these games. It’s a lot more frustrating feeling — you are closer but not close enough. Guys are angry with themselves and each other because we’re not showing what we can do. It’s frustrating and it does make you angry.”
It must be said that heading out to Rome, Jacobsen was a whole lot happier than he had been heading back from Dublin, when he had been a picture of dejection, misery and anger. Partly his mood earlier in the week was a reaction to feeling that his speciality had been one of the areas that had caused problems for his team; and part of the lightening of the mood was that he feels they have done something to correct it.
“In the second half, when we were chasing the game, we just lost our focus on the scrum. We were trying to get out early and make tackles and the like,” he said. “When you’re chasing the game away from home it’s your scrum and lineout that keep you in it and get you back into things. There’s no doubt this week that the scrum and the mauling and stuff around the lineouts is where the game’s going to be won and lost, so we need to deal with that.
“If you look at it, we would hit the scrum and be coming off before the ball’s away. Ireland would keep it in, push and get a penalty. It was everybody, it wasn’t just the two or three forward subs, it was everybody.”
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So a lengthy and brutal session early in the week may have sorted out the technicalities, all that remains is to make sure that the mental strength and concentration stay up to the level Jacobsen is demanding.