SEAN Lamont insisted that avoidable errors had again cost Scotland a victory after they went down 27-23 to Wales in Cardiff yesterday. The winger, who earned his 102nd cap as a late replacement in the starting line-up for the injured Sean Maitland, refused to take any consolation from the fact that this was a far better performance than the one the team had put in against England a week earlier.

“Silly errors cost us the game and that is the be-all and end-all of it,” Lamont said. “We showed determination but we didn’t win, and we’ve been in this situation before. People may say there were positives in that performance, but that doesn’t matter because we lost. We’re having the same conversation we had after the England game, which we didn’t want to happen. We have two weeks to turn things around in time for the Italy game and we still can.

“It’s just so frustrating. I see so many good things, but come the final whistle it’s another defeat. Nobody cares how it happened. Some may say, ‘But we played well’, but we’ve heard that a thousand times. It’s still a loss and it is tough to take especially as it is still so raw.

“I bloody well hope we’re just one win away from turning things around. I try to remain upbeat and maybe it is a confidence thing and one win will see us through. We’ll have to see. We have a week’s break before looking at Italy and we need to turn things around.”

Lamont refused to complain about Wales’s first try, scored by Gareth Davies after he was apparently in an offside position, although the Television Match Official examined the build-up and ruled it legal. “It’s a try in the history books,” the winger continued. “Nothing I can say or do now will change that.

“They looked at it again with the TMO and deemed it a try, and we have no power on what happens with these decisions.

“It is what it is, but we battled back and when we have a lead we need to learn to squeeze teams more and not let them in.”

Vern Cotter, the Scotland coach, was more inclined than Lamont to mention the positive aspects of his team’s play, although he too lamented the fact that they let a lead slip in the last quarter of an hour.

“We were in front until the 65th minute and let them score,” he said. “There were much better parts of the game than last week. We’re obviously upset not to win after the boys put in a pretty good shift, but there’s no excuses.

“The line-out was tough. They had a couple of jumpers there who were well into us. We adapted, but they put us under pressure there and we didn’t get the possession we wanted. But I thought we picked up the ball on the ground and defensively there was a better attitude, where we came up and got them and got a few turnovers.”

Cotter suggested that the Davies try should not have stood, but refused to complain about it. “I thought he was offside, but everybody makes mistakes,” he said.

Scotland captain Greig Laidlaw was more forthcoming on that issue. “I certainly thought it was offside as well when the scrum-half picked it up from Roberts’ knock back,” he said. “He [the referee] certainly saw that from our body language on the field. We were moving up and thought we were going to pick up a penalty. Unfortunately not, but we’re never going to be able to get that back, are we?”

Laidlaw, like Cotter and Lamont, stressed the avoidable mistakes. “We made with a couple of errors and gave Wales field position,” the captain added. “In the first half we caused them a lot of problems around the ruck. That was how we wanted to play, but we struggled to emulate that because of lack of ball in the second half.”