Alasdair Dickinson thinks Scotland “have to believe” they can get something out of the Calcutta Cup game at Twickenham despite Saturday’s capitulation to Italy leaving them staring down a third RBS 6 Nations whitewash in a decade.
The loose-head prop admitted there was “no way to sugarcoat” the 19-22 loss, only the second time the Italians have won away from Rome in the championship. Pressure exerted by the visitor’s devastating mauling game eventually told with a penalty try awarded by referee George Clancy as time was expiring at BT Murrayfield.
Scotland’s remaining opponents in the championship England and Ireland aren’t exactly shy about using the driving maul either, and with head coach Vern Cotter admitting there are few personnel changes available to him the Scots look fatally vulnerable for the final two games unless they arrive at a solution.
However while Dickinson readily accepted the criticism that will come for this display, he still believes Scotland have to move forward positively.
“The honest truth is we didn’t take the strides forward we have done for the last few games,” he said. “We didn’t execute certain things well today, I can’t sugarcoat it.
“We let ourselves down, the penalty count against us is still an issue and the driving maul was a weakness today.
“It’s undeniably a setback but we can’t just be negative, but we have to pick our heads up and keep looking forward. We have to stop this cycle of two steps forward, one step back.”
That had to start at Twickenham, he continued.
“It’s particularly tough to take when the first two games we feel we could have won,” he added. “But you can’t let the negatives control you, you have to go down there positive you can win.
“England are flying high at the moment, we just need to rise and grind. Italy obviously scored off the first driving maul but they tried it again second half and we smashed it, we can do it when we focus and do our drills right.
“We’re still tight as a group. We’ll get criticised but we can’t let too many negative things effect us. There’s anger after games like that but it’s more disappointment, letting the crowd, management, ourselves down. That’s the hardest thing to take.”
Scotland will not be helped by a recurrence of Ross Ford’s severe back spasms that caused him to miss time after the Autumn Internationals. The hooker is one of Cotter’s key men and the Scots can ill-afford any more casualties of this sort with Richie Gray sorely missed on Saturday.
The head coach admitted he would took a long look at himself, noting that on-field discipline is still a problem “and I’m clearly not getting that message across”.
He freely admitted England would be licking their lips at the success of the Italian pack.
“You’d have to say yes, if we don’t address a couple of issues at lineout,” he said. “They’ll be addressed with brutal honesty next week, and we’ll see that as an opportunity to move forward. We need to find our way through the difficult situations we put ourselves in.
“I never expected this to be easy, and although we dislike losses, especially ones of this manner, it will serve and will be used to move us forward.
“When we get into a situation when momentum’s with us, we need to know how to exploit that with points, when it’s against us, we need to resist and absorb pressure and then apply it back on the other team.”
Cotter’s orders didn’t seem to be followed with the usually taciturn Kiwi berating his team’s kicking game from the coach’s box in the press deck, which had a glass panel shattered by one frustrated occupant.
“I think we’ll get a shift forward from this,” he insisted. “We need to shift from a game where we’re carrying to a game when we put a foot to the ball. We led the whole game and it’s disappointing to lose it in the end through our own errors.”