IT never quite got to the point where he was waking up screaming, but Ross Ford now admits that Scotland's humiliation in Cardiff last year was just about the lowest point of his rugby career.

Which, when you think on it, is saying quite a lot, as that career has kept him in the Test spotlight for more than a decade and earned him more than 80 caps.

For Ford and his Scottish team-mates, it was not just the scale of it - the 51-3 loss was their heaviest defeat in Championship history - but the manner. After Stuart Hogg had been sent off in the 22nd minute for his reckless challenge on Wales fly-half Dan Biggar, the wheels came off Scotland's performance in spectacular fashion and they were in utter disarray for the best part of an hour.

Wales finished with seven tries; Scotland finished with their noses in the dirt. And while the Scots' fortunes have been revived and energised over the past 11 months as Vern Cotter has settled into his role as national coach, it is easy to suspect that, for many of the players who were involved in that game last March, the book will only be closed after Sunday's return match against the Welsh at BT Murrayfield. And all the more firmly if Scotland can take their revenge with a win.

Not that Ford is obsessing about it. But push him on the point and he admits it was down here with the very worst experiences of his rugby life. "No-one likes to be involved in games like that," he said quietly. "It was embarrassing."

In fairness, Ford's culpability has an asterisk attached. Unusually, the 30-year-old was only among the replacements that day at the Millennium Stadium, his customary place in the starting lineup having been given to Scott Lawson instead. By the time he entered the fray, early in the second half, Scotland were already in damage-limitation mode [not that the damage was much limited by the end].

Should Scotland try to use that experience this weekend? Should they be fired up by the lust for vengeance? Or should they park it, move on, pretend it never happened?

Ford seems to be caught between various stools on that question. "We will speak about that game, I know we will," he said. "Hoggy going off wasn't ideal because when you play that amount of time with a man down the boys are going to tire. We emptied our bench but nothing much went wrong for Wales; they were very clinical. They finished well, but that was back then.

"Now we are back at Murrayfield and it's a great atmosphere to be playing in. That game last year is certainly up there in terms of my lowest point for Scotland, but I don't necessarily think this weekend is about revenge. It's about us moving forward as a group."

In that regard, what happened on the first weekend of this year's RBS 6 Nations Championship is probably of rather more importance than the events of the last round of the 2014 tournament. Scotland and Wales both suffered defeats, but the moods in their respective camps were wildly different. Wales, who had started with such high hopes, were seemingly in despair after losing 16-21 to England - and understrength England at that - in Cardiff on Friday night, while the Scots did far better than expected as they went down 15-8 to France in Paris the following day.

Ford does not expect a different Wales to pitch up at Murrayfield on Sunday. "Wales came up against a very good English outfit," he said. "Wales are very good at what they do and I don't think they'll be any more up for it had than if they won last Friday night.

"The defeat doesn't make them any more dangerous than normal. We just need to be good at what we do. We watched bits of their game and we will go into more detail this week. England defended really well and caused Wales so problems, we'll need to try and do the same. We need to try and create the same kind of space we did against France."

Where things didn't look too clever for the Scots was on a stats sheet that showed, yet again, that they had coughed up a double-digit number of penalties. In each of the past two seasons, the Scots have topped the Six Nations crime count, a pattern that has gifted easy points to their opponents. They scored the only try of the match in the Stade de France last weekend, but indiscipline allowed French fly-half to grab victory for his side with five successful penalty strikes.

The dilemma for Scotland is that they still have to be abrasive. Most penalties are given around the tackle and breakdown areas, and in Test rugby those are not places where you can start pussyfooting around.

Ford said: "With the best will in the world you can't be squeaky clean the whole time. Bodies fall everywhere and sometimes you do things you don't want to do.

"It is a tough one. It is something you have to keep reminding each other about because it is an intense atmosphere. It is about talking and trying to get the ref aware we are not infringing Nobody actively goes out to give away silly penalties. We need to be smarter on how we move about the contact area."