Dean Ryan has warned his Scotland forwards that they will be given a single opportunity to prove they can right the wrongs which brought about last week's 20-point defeat at Twickenham.
Generally, public messages from management are coded in the modern game, but Scotland's interim forwards coach is renowned for his plain speaking and could hardly have been more blunt yesterday.
"Players have to respond now," he said, ahead of today's Murrayfield meeting with Italy. This is the national team, you're representing your country, you're at home and given that we had our arse kicked last week and it's been the topic of conversation all week I'll be desperately disappointed if I don't get the response on Saturday. I'm not saying that's going to be the all-singing solution, but I want a response because then I know what I'm dealing with.
"If I don't get a response we're dealing with a different thing and will have to look at slightly different things."
Ryan was marginally more diplomatic as he stopped just short of directly criticising Scotland's previous coaching team headed by fellow Englishman Andy Robinson.
However, it did not seem to hard to decipher an opinion that the Scots have deluded themselves in recent years regarding the quality of their efforts and need to get back to basics.
"The simple things of the game come first and then tactically the adaptation of what you want to do come secondary. Have Scotland taken that approach in the past? From an analytical point of view, I don't think they have," said the former international lock who has taken a sabbatical from working as a television analyst to help Scott Johnson, Scotland's caretaker head coach, through this campaign.
"They have tried to maximise their areas of strength and tried to avoid their areas of weakness, which is what everybody does, but we've come so far away from it [the fundamentals] that it's becoming an issue. We now need to go back and engage with it. Both Johnno and myself are giving the same message. Stop fooling ourselves that there's a tactical five-man lineout or back line play that's going to win us Test matches. It's not. What's going to win us Test matches is engaging with the gain-line battle."
Fewer than 50,000 of the 67,500 available tickets had been sold yesterday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article