'We've got to be honest with ourselves': Scotland pledge to close Six Nations gap

Sione Fukofuka believes that the Scotland coaching staff and players have got to be “pretty honest” with each other as they start to pick the bones out of a disappointing Guinness Women’s Six Nations campaign and then begin building towards the WXV Global Series in September and October.

On Sunday, Scotland were 47-0 down against Ireland at half-time in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin and went on to lose 54-5 in their Round 5 game to give them a fifth place finish.

It was their fourth big defeat in a row – England beat them 84-7, Italy 41-14 and France 69-28 – meaning that the opening round 24-19 triumph in Wales seems like a distant memory.

Yes, Scotland were injury-ravaged during the campaign and missed a lot of experience in a number of games, including regular captain Rachel Malcolm and their best two players Evie Gallagher and Emma Orr, but defensive frailties in particular will be a real worry for Fukofuka.

His side conceded 41 tries across the five matches and the Australian, who was appointed head coach in December, said after the Ireland loss: “I think we’ve got to be pretty honest with ourselves.

“We’re exactly where we should be, we beat Wales and then have lost the other four games so clearly there’s a gap between us and the top three that we must work really hard to close.

“We’re really disappointed in the margins of the scorelines in the last four games. Where we are at the moment is that when you take 12 players out it makes it really hard to compete week in, week out.

“We need to spend time over the summer closing the gap, working really hard as a collective and making sure that when we turn the corner for WXV we’re all on the same page and that we are really excited to play some quality opposition.”

In terms of the 12 players who were missing at various stages of the competition they were the aforementioned Malcolm, Gallagher and Orr along with Anne Young, Lana Skeldon, Sarah Bonar, Rachel McLachlan, Alex Stewart, Lisa Thomson, Evie Wills, Francesca McGhie and Hannah Walker.

A big plus in their absence was that it allowed young players such as Emily Coubrough, Holland Bogan, Rianna Darroch and Aicha Sutcliffe to step up to the mark and become full Scotland caps.

The major positive for Scotland during the tournament was the emergence of Edinburgh University and Glasgow Warriors No.8 Coubrough.

The 19-year-old was thrown in at the deep end versus Wales and did very well, making 17 tackles and 16 carries. She scored a try versus France and made 20 tackles and 10 carries versus Ireland.

“The silver lining to us having had so many injuries is that we’ve got a lot of young players now that have been exposed to Test rugby,” the head coach said.

“We’ve also got players that maybe haven’t had as many minutes in a Scotland jumper in the past as they would have liked getting more minutes and the lessons that they learned during the Six Nations are going to hold us in good stead as we go forward.

“Where we are now though is disappointing and on the back of these results we have to be pretty hard on ourselves and look at all aspects of the programme and how we can improve it.

“We’ve got a little bit of time now to review the Six Nations campaign. We want to look at all elements of the programme from top to bottom so we’ll take a couple of weeks to do that and then we will effectively get straight into planning for WXV.

“Over the summer we’ll have a central training programme running in Scotland as well as some players coming up from down south. We’ll be back in together for the initial part at the end of June and then the vast majority of the players will be in with us at the end of July.”

In September, the Scots will host Canada, New Zealand and Australia in the new-look WXV Global Series before heading down under to face the latter in two more Tests in October.

That is a tough run of games against top opposition so it will take a big pre-season under Fukofuka and his assistants Ioan Cunningham and Dave Butcher to get the squad up to speed for that run of contests.

To be fair to the trio, and skills coach Claire Cruikshank who was involved during the Women’s Six Nations, they did not have a lot of time ‘on the grass’ with the players before the tournament.

However, Scotland did reach a Women’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final last year and, despite retirements and injuries since then, 80-cap stand-off Helen Nelson said after leading the team against France and Ireland: “As a senior player, going through this rebuild again after the highs of the World Cup last year has been a tough one to take.

“But looking at the positives, we’ll use these experiences from the Six Nations to grow going forward. The preseason period before the WXV Global Series is going to be huge.

“I said in the circle to the players after the Ireland match that it’s been a really long season off the back of the World Cup and then into club action and then into the Six Nations.

“I think there’s a lot of tired bodies so a mental reset will be huge for us and then once we’re freshened up we’ll come back into that pre-season – when we’ve got a big block of time together – and really aim to grow ahead of the WXV games and show what we are all about.”