Former Scotland coach Sir Ian McGeechan admits watching his old team is currently a painful experience.
The Scots are staring at a fourth RBS 6 Nations wooden spoon after losing their opening two games to Ireland and England and McGeechan says he is still hurting over their 20-0 whitewash by Stuart Lancaster's team at Murrayfield on Saturday.
"It was very painful," said McGeechan. "We didn't look as though we were going to score, never mind win. It was very disappointing.
"Italy now is certainly a very big game, without a doubt."
Scotland have won only two of their last 12 Six Nations fixtures and their next opponents are the Azzurri - who have also lost both their first two matches against Wales and France - in Rome on February 22.
Scott Johnson's side have conceded almost 50 points in their opening two games and scored just three as their attacking plans failed miserably both times.
McGeechan, the former British and Irish Lions coach, is at a loss to explain the Scots' current sorry plight.
"I don't know enough about the ins and outs to say what is going wrong," he said. "I've been away from it for nearly 10 years.
"I watch them on a weekend and want them to win."
Since McGeechan left the job in 2003, Scotland have tried three Australians, an Englishman and a Scot in Frank Hadden, in the managerial role while Australian Johnson will hand over to New Zealander Vern Cotter this year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article