With the RBS Six Nations games so close together, his fate should be resolved within four weeks after home games against Italy this Saturday then Wales just over a fortnight later followed by a visit to Twickenham on 19 March. Williams has to mastermind a win over Italy at Murrayfield. Italy are below Scotland in the world rankings, they have injury problems with Mauro Bergamasco out, a one-dimensional gameplan, a dodgy stand-off and if you can stop their rolling maul they have no Plan B. The “piano shifters” as John Kirwan, the Italy coach, dubs his pack, are big but vulnerable to a fast, mobile, passionate rucking game and if any country should be good at that, it is Scotland. Winning games such as this one against Italy is what Williams is paid for and if he cannot do it, he is not worth his salary. It’s that simple.
If Scotland cannot beat Italy at Murrayfield, what chance do they have against a Wales that thrashed the Italians 38-8 in Rome, and at Twickenham, the graveyard of Scottish hopes for more than 90 years? Scotland would have a second consecutive Six Nations whitewash, 15 defeats in 17, a record that gives Williams no credibility.
Don’t go thinking Italy will be pushovers either. Scotland have won only once in Italy since the Azzurri joined the Six Nations in 2000, and if you take the 47-15 win by Scotland in the World Cup warm-up in August 2003 out of the equation, which is easy because Kirwan drove his players to exhaustion in a bid to get ready for their ridiculous schedule in the main competition, they have crept closer at Murrayfield.
Their pack is a formidable set-piece unit and in the likes of Sergio Parisse, fresh from escaping a citing charge for stamping on Wales stand-off Stephen Jones this month, they have genuine world-class back-row talent. Alessandro Troncon may be a veteran but he is capable of bossing the game and if the Scots forwards don’t give Chris Cusiter a lot more protection than against Ireland, he will do even better than Peter Stringer in making life a misery for the young Borders player. Last year in Rome they bullied Scotland, and this year they will stick to the same gameplan: keep the ball tight, batter their way to and through the Scots.
Everybody accepts that the players have to produce against Italy, with the onus on the front five to stand and deliver, but they have to go out armed with a gameplan and a back-up that they feel comfortable with. That is the coach’s job. The gameplan has to reflect the players and the skills available, not some utopian vision of Scottish rugby. If you know passing under pressure is a weakness, don’t demand that they do it, let them run and ruck instead; if the stand-off can’t consistently land the ball a yard inside the touchline, don’t ask him to do it or select a player who can.
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Williams’s gaffes don’t help. They lift the lid on backroom attitudes. Last week after defeat he said: “I’m not in the business of publicly blaming players,” followed by a minute of blaming players who apparently don’t have the basic skills, lose their discipline, don’t provide enough cover, get out-muscled (despite a summer programme designed to address that) and cannot handle the intensity. The problem is not the double standards but rather that he is undermining his own cause; keep telling players how useless they are and they will believe you.
Then there was an irritatingly flippant response when his own future came up, followed by the statement that he was “relaxed with where we are, very relaxed”. This bore out how uncomfortable he felt, but any coach who feels that way after losing 12 out of 14 games, after seeing his side perform well one week and then take a huge step backwards the next, is not getting enough heat either from the media or his bosses.
Williams’s first game in charge against Wales in the Six Nations last year saw Andy Henderson selected on the wing as part of a bewildering gameplan that did nothing to unsettle Wales but everything to confuse his own players. Then there was Chris Paterson, who he knew was re-learning the stand-off role and had only just shouldered the goal-kicking duties. Williams then added captaincy to the burden. When Paterson then failed to shine in any of the roles, Williams shunted him out of the way to full-back. It did not seem to matter that Paterson had done well at stand-off in the World Cup and had sparkled there in Scottish rugby’s only successful Heineken Cup campaign, when Edinburgh reached the quarter-finals last season.
Now supporters look at Dan Parks with his flimsy defence and inability to hoof the ball more than 35 yards downfield and wonder what might have been had Williams stuck with Paterson and not weighed him down with the captaincy.
Playing players out of position is a coach’s prerogative. If it works he is hailed as a brilliant spotter of talent. Williams can take credit for throwing Cusiter in at the deep end last season despite Mike Blair looking the obvious choice, and for uncovering Hugo Southwell after he had struggled to get consistent games for Edinburgh. The shift to inside-centre for the France match may even work for Southwell, but it says nothing for Williams’s relations with the club coaches that he could not give the player at least a full match there before being tested in Paris this month.
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The loss of two assistants in Todd Blackadder as forwards coach and Marty Hulme as fitness coach have hurt Scotland, but won’t matter a jot if the team starts winning. One win and performances to match the one we saw in Paris in the games against Wales and England — even if they result in defeat — would be enough to save Williams. Nothing at all for a second consecutive Six Nations should cost him his job. He knows what is at stake.