In desperation, people grasp at anything that looks like a lifeline and Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, has turned to a former SAS soldier to try to find the winning formula for his underperforming team.
As he named the side to take on Italy with a RBS Six Nations Championship wooden spoon at stake, Robinson also revealed the lengths he is prepared to go to to engineer that breakthrough.
“We have brought in Floyd Woodrow, he has been with the squad for a few days and taken a session with the team,” the head coach said. “He is a very good motivator. He was in the SAS and he has been working with the SRU since before the Six Nations. I decided to bring him in this week to speak to the players. He has been very good and we talked about what we want to achieve.”
It may, or may not, have been coincidence that, according to the players, after a particularly poor training session on Tuesday, they then got together with Woodrow, who spent 20 years in the elite military unit, and they had an exceptionally good training session yesterday.
The group is almost identical to the one that flopped so badly against Ireland, the only change is enforced with Lee Jones unable to play after being knocked unconscious last weekend. Nick De Luca, who had been selected for the Ireland game but dropped out half an hour before kick off with an injury, is restored to the team, with Max Evans moving out to the wing and Jack Cuthbert, the Bath full back, earning a call-up to the squad that appears to have shocked even him.
Advertisement
Scotland are taking on an Italy side also trying to avoid a whitewash, and which has gone back to the tried and tested in an effort to make sure they do. That means six changes from the side that battled gamely but came up short against Wales, with the most significant being the return of Martin Castrogiovanni at tighthead prop despite breaking a rib against England.
With all the veterans returning, there is no shortage of experience in the Italy side, which shares almost 800 caps between the starting XV, though the bench is a different story, with only 50 caps among them — this is possibly an advantage for Scotland if the game is tight and the experience of their bench, with more than 200 caps, might make a difference.
The pressure on Robinson and the players could hardly be greater. They have lost their last two games in Rome and if they don’t win this one, they will not only collect the first Scotland wooden spoon since 2004, but also Robinson will have supervised the worst run in the Five or Six Nations — two wins and a draw in three campaigns — since Nairn McEwen led the side from 1978 to 1980, gaining only one win.
Robinson is backing the fury in the team to work its magic in the Stadio Olympico. “There are a lot of players who are angry, they are raging, they need to channel that into the game,” he said as he announced the side. “It has been a huge disappointment and everybody is frustrated about where we are. It is heightened by the expectation beforehand and the positions we got ourselves in, when you review the games you want to scream when you see the errors made.
“It is not what I am here for but I have got to get on with it and prepare a side to take on Italy. I have got to channel those feelings just like the team, to get a performance and a result. I am enjoying working with this squad of players. Yes, there are challenges, but the passion and desire the players show is what fuels me.”
Advertisement
All of which leaves Robinson’s own position no clearer. The suggestion that there might be a coaching role open at Bath has been dogging him almost since he accepted the Scotland role and has resurfaced again in recent days. He is the only person who knows where his personal breaking point lies when it comes to the catalogue of failure over the past year.
How they line up
Italy: A Masi; G Venditti, T Benvenuti, G Canale, Mirco Bergamasco; K Burton, E Gori; A Lo Cicero, L Ghiraldini, M Castrogiovanni, Q Geldenhuys, M Bortolami, A Zanni, R Barbieri, S Parisse (captain). Replacements: T D’Apice, L Cittadini, J Furno, S Favaro, M Vosawai, T Botes, G Toniolatti, M Rizzo, A Sgarbi.
Advertisement
Scotland: S Hogg (Glasgow Warriors); M Evans (Castres), N De Luca (Edinburgh), G Morrison (Glasgow Warriors), S Lamont (Scarlets); G Laidlaw (Edinburgh), M Blair (Edinburgh); A Jacobsen (Edinburgh), R Ford (Edinburgh, captain), G Cross (Edinburgh), R Gray (Glasgow Warriors), J Hamilton (Gloucester), J Barclay (Glasgow Warriors), R Rennie (Edinburgh), D Denton (Edinburgh). Replacements: S Lawson (Gloucester), E Murray (Newcastle Falcons), A Kellock (Glasgow Warriors), R Vernon (Sale Sharks), C Cusiter (Glasgow Warriors), R Jackson (Glasgow Warriors), J Cuthbert (Bath).
Referee: A Rolland (Ireland).