I FELT completely gutted at the end of this game.

I suspect I wasn't alone. To lose to a penalty try in the last minute of a match is just about the worst kind of defeat you can experience. But Scotland deserved all they got.

A few minutes before the finish, I thought they had done enough to keep their noses in front. They had absorbed huge pressure and when they won that penalty near their own line, it looked as if the siege had been lifted. At that point, all they had to do was find a safe touch, wind down the clock as they churned through a few phases, and then put the game to bed.

But poor Peter Horne could not do the first bit. Immediately, Scotland were on the back foot again. From that moment, you could almost sense what was going to happen.

We should not be too harsh on Horne. Aside from that horrible error near the end, I thought he had a pretty sound game. He brought his centres into play well, made a few probing runs himself and the rest of his kicking was acceptable. He certainly cannot be held individually to blame for the loss.

The fact is that Scotland should have had the game won long before he made his mistake. They should have been able to grant Italy a consolation try and then laugh it off over a beer later. As has too often happened recently, though, they were hanging on by their fingertips because they had not taken their chances early on. And this time they lost their grip.

I really thought they would win this game with something to spare. And nothing that happened in the early stages made me think I was wrong in that assessment. They were brisk and ambitious from the off, and having 10 points on the board in the space of seven minutes is pretty much the definition of a dream start at this level of the game. There was no reason to think it would turn into a nightmare.

How did it happen? Mostly through silly and unforced errors that cost them field position, possession and momentum. If Scotland had been able to get into their stride and establish a rhythm they would have run away from Italy. But every time they started to get some go-forward, they did something that brought everything to a juddering halt.

But credit to Italy as well. They had tired badly towards the end of their matches against Ireland and England, but they had the stamina and the desire to keep going right to the end. And even if one of their tries was of the penalty kind (and another was of the freakish kind) that was the second game on the trot in which they have got over their opponents' line three times.

I thought their defence would be suspect. Maybe they have weaknesses there, but Scotland never came close to finding them. Mark Bennett, who looked eager throughout, took his score well, but it came from an Italian error. After all the promise Scotland had shown in attack against France and Wales, it was galling that they created virtually nothing of their own.

Alarmingly, they got too many of the basics badly wrong. Re-starts are as important a part of the modern game as scrums and line-outs, but they coughed up possession and points there because they failed to secure the ball on their own terms.

It is frightening to think what England will do against us if Scotland play as badly at Twickenham in a fortnight's time. Perhaps the fear of that will give extra impetus to their performance, but they have certainly set their supporters expectations at a new low.

That's the worst part of it for me. We seem to have taken big strides forward against France and Wales, so it is immensely disappointing to witness such a massive step in the opposite direction.