Scott Johnson has always had a slick line in patter but lately his act has started to wear
a little thin. “We’ve got to get time in the saddle here,” he said after Scotland’s 28-0 defeat by South Africa in the autumn.
“With more time in the saddle, they will get better,” he insisted after his side lost 28-6 to Ireland. “Time in the saddle is crucial,” he added after Saturday’s ignominious 20-0 defeat by England.
Johnson wants to buy his young team time to improve.
If a bad workman blames his tools, a bad coach carries on much as Johnson did after this match. Scotland's players, he said over and again, were "naive". But he dropped captain Kelly Brown, who has 61 caps, and give a debut to Chris Fusaro. And he decided he could not find space on the bench for Richie Gray, who has been a little short of his best form since the Lions tour last summer.
Poor strategy
If Johnson's selection was strange, his strategy was poor. He explained that he wanted Duncan Weir to kick quick and often, which the fly-half duly did, booting away more than 45 per cent of his possession. The upshot was that Mike Brown, Jonny May and Jack Nowell were handed opportunities to run right back at Scotland.
Between them England’s back three made 30 runs for 225 metres and beat 15 defenders. These are dismal numbers for the Scots. Here are more: their side had only 42 per cent of the possession and 38 per cent of the territory.
It is easy to read too much into stats like that but they are strikingly similar to the numbers Scotland recorded against Ireland the previous week. Despite that, Johnson reckoned “the plan was fine. The execution wasn’t great.”
Johnson will not be in the job much longer. In the summer he becomes Scotland’s first director of rugby, though he intends to spend just as much time coaching the senior squad.
Vern Cotter will take over as head coach once his contract with Clermont Auvergne is up. Cotter (52) has been there eight years.
In that time they have won the Top 14 once and finished runners-up three times, as they did in the Heineken Cup last season, when they lost the final to Toulon by a point. He has an impressive CV then, that also includes stints with Bay of Plenty and Canterbury Crusaders in his native New Zealand, if no experience at international level.
By the time Cotter arrives, the World Cup will be little more than a year away. He is on a two-year contract, so will be judged in large part on how the team performs in that tournament.
He will have little time to make an impression, let alone bring about improvement. He should have started with Scotland already but the SRU did not have the money or the inclination to pay off the final year of his contract with Clermont and the club refused to release him from it.
Instead he has been chipping in, while Johnson continues to run things. Johnson says he has been trying “to build for something, so that when Vern takes over there’s enough maturity and depth around this squad, and athleticism, that we can compete against anybody”.
The team have looked a long way short of that lately. Since they finished third in the 2013 Six Nations they have won two Tests, and lost eight. In those recent defeats by South Africa, Ireland and England, Scotland scored six points and conceded 76. And Saturday was the first time they had been shut out in the Calcutta Cup since 1978, when England won 15-0.
There is serious talent in the Scottish squad. Cotter, said to be an angry, honest and clear-thinking man who produces teams characterised by aggression and work ethic, may well be the coach who can bring the best out of them. Johnson does not seem to be.
