For all the talk of having improved strength in depth, Scotland's management yesterday continued with the anti-competitive approach to selection that has marked their ineffective 2011/12 season.

The need for competition for places may be a coaching mantra, but with the two distinct selection policies they have employed this season, those guiding Scotland have risked achieving the exact opposite.

Ahead of, and during, the World Cup, then into the first two matches of the RBS 6 Nations Championship, they made sweeping changes to the team every time, whether they won or lost.

Since the second of those matches, however, they seem to have bowed to calls from within the squad to maintain greater consistency of selection, right to the point of failing to punish a pitiful effort against an Ireland team who were on the ropes after a six-day turnaround from their meeting with France, had their top three players missing, and were led by a front-row forward with damaged ribs.

Andy Robinson's explanation for making no unenforced changes raised eyebrows yesterday.

"You review the individual and team performances," said the head coach. "There have been a lot of steps forward before that game and therefore it is about rewarding those players in this final game. We are where we are and we have to deal with it. We need to trust in the players that we don't make the individual errors that have cost us and we will win the game." Kevin Ferrie

When challenged on his use of the word "rewarding" when talking about those who produced that performance in Dublin, Robinson added: "It's because of the signs they've shown in the first three games. I feel this is the best 22 to go out and win the game."

In selectorial terms, that gives all the impression of another triumph of policy over judgment.

Just as with the way he appears to pre-plan his replacements – something Robinson also denies – so it seems that in the World Cup he and his assistants believed the best way to proceed was continually to freshen up the team. Now they seem determined to stick with players even when they put in sub-standard performances.

It does not take a degree in sports psychology to realise the potential impact of telling players either that they will not necessarily be selected again if they play well or that they will be selected again even if they play badly. Neither policy would seem designed to generate the sort of genuine edge that competition for places brings when players know that any poor showing may be their last.

Far from being told they are being rewarded, all those who involved since the off can consider themselves lucky to be so indulged when they stand on the brink of completing what could be, in competitive terms, the worst season in the history of Scottish international rugby. That is what Scotland's first failure to reach a World Cup quarter-final and second championship "whitewash" in the past quarter-of-a- century would add up to.

In his bid to avoid that, Robinson admitted to having followed the lead of rival coaches Declan Kidney, who asked Michael O'Leary, the Ryanair chief, executive to give a motivational talk to the Ireland squad and Stuart Lancaster, who asked England players' family members to send them letters of support.

He has asked Floyd Woodrow, a man with SAS experience who has been working with Graham Lowe, the SRU's director of performance rugby, to talk to the team. As we tried to find out how much impact that had made on players the case for what some thought sounded dangerously like a gimmick was made by Chris Cusiter, the qualified lawyer who is on Scotland's bench.

"We've had a lot of interaction with him within groups, backs and forwards, talking about things we feel we do well, things we don't feel we do well enough, things to improve on, little indicators that are hugely important for our performance, how we can recognise those and just try to improve. It's interesting," he said.

"He was through at Glasgow earlier in the season and he's been at Edinburgh. I think he's had something like 24 years in the SAS, he's got some good stories and he's worth a listen."

Asked to elaborate on how that could improve a rugby team, Cusiter added: "He's obviously quite experienced at what he does and trying to get the best out of teams, so there's very subtle little things. He observed us in training yesterday and made a few comments. We talked a lot about that and how we could improve performance for today's session for example and straightaway there was a big difference.

"We didn't have probably our best session yesterday and then a really good session today. Just little key indicators like getting the energy and enthusiasm up and the right people saying the right thing at the right time. That kind of thing. You need to be open to all sorts of opinions and voices. He's from a completely different background but what he talks about is very applicable to rugby union team situations."

All very well, but at the end of yet another failed campaign it is hard not to wonder what Scotland's coaches are being paid vast salaries for if someone like Woodrow really is required to find the right way of getting such simple and, frankly, glaringly obvious messages across.

Impossible, too, this week, to avoid comparison with the way the much smaller and less well-paid Glasgow Warriors coaching team has week-in, week-out this season found the words to steer their men through 23 matches, losing only seven . . . one fewer than Scotland have lost in their last six.