Dismal Scotland’s slump in the rain piles more pressure on Townsend

So the dastardly English plot to derail Scotland’s Six Nations campaign was effective after all. With a fair bit of help from Italy, too, of course. Gregor Townsend’s pre-match claim that a report that he will take up a position with Newcastle Red Bulls after the World Cup was simply “an English newspaper trying to do something the week ahead of the Calcutta Cup” felt like an unsubtle piece of deflection at the time.

The head coach insisted the rumours would not negatively affect his team ahead of their Six Nations match in Italy – and defended that stance tersely at full-time here – but there is little doubt that the whole charade around Townsend and his part-time job with Red Bull is an issue that isn’t going to go away.

That swirl of speculation over his future didn’t directly influence events here as his team lost their opening Six Nations match for the first time since 2020. It didn’t cause his team to ship two tries in the opening 12 minutes to Louis Lynagh and Tommaso Menoncello, influence Ewan Ashman’s wretched lineout throws or cause George Turner to career into a needless yellow card. The Scotland players need to take their own share of the blame for going down to a second successive defeat in Rome following a wearily familiar loss here two years ago.

However, the whole situation around Townsend is contributing to an air of uncertainty about the future direction of the team under his leadership. And while the idea that the head coach of any national team needs a side hustle might have been tolerated were he still presiding over a winning side, then it feels like a needless extravagance when a side find themselves mired in mediocrity.

After nine years of Townsend’s tenure, Scotland are undoubtedly stuck in a rut. For all the talk of this championship being a clean sheet and the insistence that all the failings of a dismal autumn international series had been analysed and ironed out, what unfolded in Rome was simply more of the same. Poor defence, set-piece struggles and, for once, a backline that failed to fire all combined to hand Italy a precious victory and get Scotland off to the worst possible start.

Talk of the Scots competing for the Six Nations title always seemed fanciful but they now find themselves drawn increasingly into the wooden spoon conversation. England head north to Murrayfield next weekend looking to regain the Calcutta Cup and with the scent of blood in their nostrils.

Lose that and Scotland will head to Cardiff desperately needing to beat Wales or face the consequences. A team who won just twice to finish fourth in each of the previous two editions of the Six Nations will now struggle even to achieve as much this time around.

Townsend continues to have the support of the Scottish Rugby hierarchy who sanctioned his Red Bull consultancy last year and he didn’t give the impression of a man feeling under any significant pressure, even after this latest setback. It is hard to imagine many other managers or head coaches being given this level of leniency from their paymasters and it will be interesting to see just how bad things have to get before Scottish Rugby chief executive Alex Williamson and chair John McGuigan decide they need to act and start the search for a new head coach.

Any lingering optimism around this team was washed out in a Rome monsoon as Italy showed them how to play with spirit, character and fight. It seems when it comes to Scotland, Red Bull clips your wings.

Photograph by Gregorio Borgia/AP