Scotland U20 coach Kenny Murray admits the players had some ‘honest’ chats in the dressing room after their second half capitulation against Italy in the Six Nations.
Scotland led 14-7 at half time and looked to be putting in arguably their best performance of the campaign but they couldn’t get going after the break and conceded 40 unanswered points to lose 47-14 in Treviso.
Pierro Gritti opened the scoring for Italy before Euan McVie and Fergus Watson got themselves on the scoresheet to put Scotland in front at the break. A controversial second try from Gritti which led to a long TMO review for offside saw the Italians level and from then on in it was one way traffic.
Hooker Nicholas Gasperini score two tries before Mirko Belloni got one and then Marco Scalbarin got the try of the night after an exquisite cross field kick from Martino Pucciarello. A yellow card followed for Luke Coulston and then there was still time for a sixth try for the home side when Patrick de Villiers crossed when the clock was red.
And Murray was visibly frustrated with the second half but he left it up to the players to discuss what went wrong and allowed them to have a few words among themselves in the dressing room after the game.
READ MORE: Italy 47-14 Scotland: Second half collapse leaves young guns shellshocked
He said: “We had a chat in the changing room at the end of the game and asked the players what their reflections were. What did they do and what did they not do which allowed them to get the foothold and score the tries.
“The boys said they weren’t accurate enough in defence, we didn’t win the collisions well enough and we put ourselves under pressure with our own errors.
“The boys played the game and can reflect better than anyone so we’ve had an honest review on that.”
Murray was clear in his views that Scotland weren't good enough in the second half and set their own standards, even if Italy had stepped their game up.
He added: “We set ourselves our own standards irrespective of who we play. If teams are good enough to score tries against you then fine but we’ve got to be tough on ourselves.
“We let them get some soft tries tonight which let them in the game and for ourselves we weren’t clinical enough when we had the ball. We’re disappointed in our own performance instead of looking at them.”
Read the rules here