The Scotland scenario that'd make Gregor Townsend 'much more concerned'

Gregor Townsend called for a sense of perspective to be applied in the wake of Scotland’s chastening 32-18 defeat by Ireland as he pointed out that it would have been a “massive shock” if his side had turned over the defending Six Nations champions at Murrayfield on Sunday.

After an encouraging autumn campaign, the Scots came into the championship with high hopes of finishing in the top two for the first time this century.

But Sunday’s demoralising defeat at the hands of an Irish side chasing a third consecutive title brought a familiar sense of deflation for Townsend and his players after they had spoken extensively in recent months about the progress they felt they had made since their 36-14 World Cup pool-stage defeat by the same opponents in Paris in October 2023.

“No, I don’t,” said the head coach when asked if he felt an 11th consecutive defeat by Ireland had left Scotland “back at square one” in their quest to become genuine title contenders.

“The scoreline was big, and I know it’s you guys’ (journalists) job to talk about this game but we have to look a bit longer term and where we’ve been.

“After that game against Ireland in the World Cup we changed a lot, who we select, who we are as a team, and that was done with the players as well. Our next game, we played a different type of rugby against Wales.

“We’ve carried on that, we’ve added bits to it and we’ve been really competitive since then. This was probably our most disappointing performance, defeat let’s say, since Ireland, but it happens every now and again. If it was to happen in the next two or three games I’d be much more concerned.

“It’s a one-off game and you’ve got to have context. We’re playing a tournament where you’ve got to play five games and if you start to over-analyse what went on in the one game, you lose sight of what you’ve been building towards. I said before the game that the defeats we’ve had against Ireland have shaped who we are as well.

“It’s changed a little bit how we played and that’s been transferred to other performances. It didn’t transfer well enough this time but you’ve got to take the learnings out of your game.

“No-one’s more disappointed than me that we weren’t able to go two from two today and we weren’t able to beat Ireland. But they deserved to win and we’ve got to make sure that this game, and all the last four or five that we’ve played, are part of who we are next time we play.”

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Townsend admitted “it’s going to be difficult” for Scotland – who have trips to England and France either side of a home game against Wales – to get back into title contention after Sunday’s defeat.

“We’ve lost to the number two team in the world who are going for the third title,” he said. “If you take it like that, you go ‘well, it would have been a shock’ if we had won. I think it would have been a massive shock. They were clear favourites but we believed we could win and we worked hard towards a win.

“Playing our next opponent (England) was always going to be difficult (regardless of the Ireland result). We don’t have a brilliant record down there, it’s a very tough place to play but we do have a very good record recently. They’ve just come off the back of winning a great game against France.

“We know how difficult each game in the Six Nations is. We’ve got to obviously play much better next time to have a chance of bouncing back with a victory.”

Townsend indicated that Bath centre Cam Redpath and Edinburgh back-rower Ben Muncaster could come into contention after missing the start of the championship through injury, but Glasgow backs Kyle Steyn and Adam Hastings will remain sidelined.

Key duo Finn Russell and Darcy Graham will continue to be assessed after the head injuries they sustained against Ireland, with the latter released from hospital on Sunday evening.