Frank Hadden, the Scotland coach, was making a good show of defiance. Asked about comments from Warren Gatland, his opposite number, about how only one team had turned up in Cardiff prepared to play rugby, his reply was: “Praise indeed. It is not our job to entertain the crowd, we came to win. We knew what was available to us, we had a very good idea of how to do it, if we had held on to a bit of ball we might have found ourselves in a better position.”
Which is missing the point. How can the players have confidence in themselves when the coach so obviously does not? If they are told not to try things, not to create tactics off the cuff, but to kill the game with one-pass rugby, rucks instead of offloads, and a grim determination to kick for territory then they will never reach their potential. Worse still he is wrong. Hadden may justify his tactics on the basis that they were designed to win the game but the scoreboard at the end exposes that for the nonsense it is. It is one thing to play conservative rugby to grind out results if the team has the weaponry to do that, but Scotland don’t.
It was his failure to realise that that cost Hadden’s immediate predecessor, Matt Williams, his job and gave the former Edinburgh coach his chance. If Hadden continues to fall into the same trap, his time in charge may not have much longer to run.
The fact is that Scotland’s best performances over the last five years have come when the shackles have been taken off the near win in South Africa in 2003, victory over France two years ago, the second halves against England and Wales that exposed the negativity from Williams to be the nonsense it was and effectively ended is reign, the final quarter against Argentina in the World Cup that brought them close to overhauling the 13-point deficit that negativity had earned.
Remember Hadden’s own words from that win over France, his first significant victory as Scotland coach: “In terms of guts, determination and commitment it was outstanding. We did not know if we would play well enough to win... but we did know we would perform.” That was a team sent out to tackle their hearts out and stoke the fires of rugby ambition. And one that won.
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After all, how is a player like Nick De Luca going to get the confidence to produce the kind of performances he puts in regularly for Edinburgh, his club, if he only gets three or four passes a game? What is the point in having a fast, athletic back row if they are to be restricted to bashing into people? Where has the lineout that once struck feat into opponents disappeared to? What is the point of having one of the strongest back threes in international rugby if the only time they see the ball is when the opposition kick it to them?
Hadden has only two weeks to find the answers.