Even before news of “Booze-gate” broke on Friday, there had been something off-colour, something identifiably but inexplicably flat about Scotland’s Six Nations.
Ever since an opening-day win over England, Gregor Townsend’s men have struggled to get anything going; laboured to look anything like the team we believe they can become, or even the one they have already proved themselves to be in recent seasons.
Far from taking the crucial step from being competitive to actually challenging for silverware, Scotland have regressed, both in terms of outcomes and the whole feel around the set-up. Where in the most recent two Six Nations they established a clear identity, built on unyielding defence iced with individual flair in the backs, this time it has all felt a bit of a muddle. How arrestingly grim it was to remember that a few short weeks ago, many of us genuinely believed we could be coming to Dublin to watch a championship decider.
What we saw was about as much as we could have hoped for, in the context of the past two months, and certainly the previous 24 hours.
Undone largely by their own gratuitous mistakes, Scotland competed gamely and never looked in any danger of being subjected to the sort of steamrollering that many — most? — of us had expected.
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Friday’s revelations inevitably prompted the question as to whether the coach had lost the dressing room. The campaign as a whole has prompted the question as to how and why the team had lost its train of thought.
But the way they approached this game, with vim, vigour and renewed attacking intent — at least in the first half — did not make Scotland look like a team who have totally run out of road. Even so, the fact we are reduced to such small mercies shows the scale of the task, and makes those bar-room tales all the more unpalatable.
Whatever the level of nocturnal permissions the Scotland squad had on their return from Rome last Saturday night — accounts vary wildly — the episode does not reflect well on anyone.
There is a time and a place for team bonding, and some will argue that the occasion of a 50th cap for Ali Price fits such a billing.
But even if we accept that, the venture into Edinburgh was undertaken by only six players. Either the vast majority of the squad recognised the folly of the mission or a splinter group had had their own plans all along.
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Regardless of its genesis, the outing amounted to an open challenge to the authority of Townsend. We can only assume that was never the intention, but it was certainly the effect. That the incident should involve the team’s two most senior players only adds to the sense of judgment having gone awry. Yet to pin everything on Stuart Hogg and Finn Russell would be to get away from the simple truth that there is no defence for any of the not-so-super six.
Viewed in the round, Scotland’s tournament has been pretty much one long hangover after the initial elation of the Calcutta Cup. Weren’t we meant to be well beyond that? Wasn’t this the team that would finally have Scotland challenging for silverware? That requires consistency, however, and there is still far too little of that.
If word of what happened in the early hours of last Sunday came as a nasty shock, none of what happened in the Aviva Stadium will have been remotely surprising.
Ireland, as they always do, soaked up waves of ambitious but ultimately impotent Scottish pressure. Scotland, as they always do, allowed their opponents easy access with a series of unforced errors and cheap penalties. And when Andy Farrell’s side got into their groove — and the heart of the Scottish defence — there was nothing they could do to stop them.
At least those Scottish supporters got to see their side play without inhibition — a welcome splash of colour in a campaign that has seen them rely too heavily on kicking at the same time as a previously watertight defence has begun to list.
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Some of the off the cuff stuff was good, some of it rather less so, but it was perhaps telling that their points came from one of the few sequences of multi-phase play that the visitors managed to construct.
Even then, had it not been for another Dublin brainfart from Hogg, we might have had a
different outcome. Same old story, you might say.
