If Scotland are to win back international rugby’s oldest trophy this weekend then as well as England’s finest they must beat a computer that reckons it will just be the same old story for the men in blue this season.

The good news is that the machine in question expects Scotland to win in Rome, but beyond that it suggests that the optimism that has been pouring out of the Scottish camp this past couple of weeks will prove as misplaced as in every other year in recent memory, with two wins in the same season registered just once since Frank Hadden steered the team to home wins over France and England in 2006, along with that year's win in Italy.

Hadden - very much the prophet not recognised in his own country throughout his time as coach and beyond in terms of his recognition of what is required to improve the domestic game - remains the last Scotland coach to have registered wins over England, France and Wales, but the recent World Cup at which Scotland was, partly due to scheduling, the last of the European teams to exit, is the latest reason hopes have been raised.

The reality is, of course, that if you look back to the corresponding pre-tournament period over that past decade, the coverage will be close to identical, with players and coaches expressing confidence that it will somehow be different this time. Instead there have been two whitewashes and a total of just five wins registered in the past six years under three different coaches - Andy Robinson, Scott Johnstone and Vern Cotter – since Hadden’s four year stint, which followed Matt Williams’ combined total of one win in two championships.

Cold hard statistics are sometimes useful in reminding us of the reality of the situation given that, for all that they came close to beating Australia in the quarter-finals, Scotland also came perilously close to failing to reach that stage when facing previously shambolic Samoa in their final pool match in a tournament that Murrayfield’s strategists had identified as one they were going to win.

Sadly, then, the information directed our way this week, seems in similar vein and while we might like to think, in these straitened financial times, a business insurance company would have more to do with its time than run a simulation of the Six Nations Championship 10,000 times, the outcome is sobering.

Based, promoters of this information say, on a ‘complex mathematical formula created by a team of experts whose day job is predicting the impact of catastrophes’, this computer model produced outcomes from 10,000 games which brought the conclusion that there is a 35 per cent likelihood that Ireland will win the title.

These same findings place England second, France third, Wales fourth and Scotland fifth with Italy taking their turn to be whitewashed and so lift the ‘Wooden Spoon’.

Many will baulk at such apparent pessimism, of course and messengers have been shot for less, but it is worth asking ourselves whether these projections are out of kilter with experience of this tournament in the context of the false hope that has been built up year after year and, arguably more relevantly, this season's Scottish performances in Europe in particular, but also in a Pro12 competition that has been proven to be weaker than ever, having failed to produce a single quarter-finalist in the Champions Cup.

This is not what Scots want to read right now, of course, but it is not just about telling people what they want to hear as much as that is the easy way to court popularity.

Back in the nineties, when editing Scottish Rugby Magazine, I would routinely canvas leading Scottish rugby writers of the day seeking predictions ahead of the Five Nations Championship at a time when, admittedly, Scottish prospects were much better than they have been lately.

None of these gentlemen write about the game now, but it was a more objective era in which the majority would offer measured views, with one exception who, without fail, would predict a Scotland ‘Grand Slam’.

When I challenged him on this at the third or fourth time of asking, he replied that: ‘If the boys do it I wouldn’t want to have been seen to have backed against them.’

Such blind loyalty is all very well, but my own preference has always been for considered, evidence-based, analysis.

That said I am not wholly without optimism this particular weekend, not least because of the emergence as a leader of Jonny Gray in supporting Greig Laidlaw who has grown impressively into the job of captain.

For all that the memory remains painful of a near identical scenario four years ago, with relatively settled Scotland starting at home against an England team under a new coach, this match is winnable.

Consequently I am prepared to defy the computer this weekend, with the caveat of admitting to expecting it to be right, where Scotland are concerned, in the rest of the campaign.

Apologies, meanwhile, to those who feel this is insufficiently hubristic, but there is surely more than enough of that about elsewhere to satisfy anyone’s appetite.