THERE has been a fair amount of soul-searching down in Wales over the last week: brought on not so much by depression over the result against England on opening night but by the manner of it.
Losing to their closest neighbours was bad enough but the feeling that after half time they failed to fire a shot in anger brought on that curious Welsh mixture of pathos and anger.
On the record, it is all about defiance. The players were scarcely out of the changing rooms before they were declaring their RBS Six Nations Championship campaign anything but dead. Slightly dented maybe, but definitely alive and strong.
After all, the players pointed out, they had proved a couple of seasons ago, when they lost to Ireland in the opening game and went on to claim the title by winning everything from there to the finish line, that they have the bounce-back factor that is needed to pull off the feat. More recently they took a walloping last summer in the first Test in South Africa but came close to winning the second; lost to Australia in the Autumn and rebounded to beat South Africa. No team in current world rugby is better at recovering from such disappointments.
They have a point. Well up to a point anyway. In that match against Ireland they had a dreadful first half but were brilliant after the break and came within inches of a memorable comeback. It was enough to give them momentum into the rest of the campaign.
Same with the others. The results went wonky but there were elements in the Welsh performance to sparked the team back to life.
This time, it is the other way round. The longer the game against England went on, the more removed from it they seemed to be. Instead of a memorable recovery and ending on a high, they nearly conceded even more scores in the final minutes and finished on a gloomy note.
For Sam Warburton, the captain, the biggest disappointment was that the side never produced the kind of play they are known for: "We have spoken about it as a group of players and if it happened again I think we would respond a lot better than we did," he said. "We need to try and play a bit more rugby because that's what we are about. When we play well we get our key players in the game and get some go-forward.
"Teams are starting to play a little bit less rugby against us and it's how we can adapt to that. Scotland is a must-win game for us. It's always an arm-wrestle for quite a long time against the Scots, and looking at them now their line speed is excellent in defence. It will be another big challenge for us.
"We need to get back to winning ways and it is must-win because if we want to win the Championship we are going to have to win all four of our remaining games. One step at a time, but we have to win tomorrow."
Recent history is strongly in Wales's favour, since they have not lost to Scotland since that dreadful 2007 kick-fest that ended in a 21-9 win for the Scots with neither side managing a try.
Since then it has been pretty much one-way traffic with the sole exception of the 2010 match where Shane Williams scored deep into extra time to complete the comeback from 10 points behind against a Scotland side that finished with 13 men on the pitch.
So in their minds, this is the perfect rebound match. As Vern Cotter, the Scotland head coach, pointed out, Wales see beating Scotland as "just another day at the office", so after the disappointments of losing to England, what better way to get back on track than facing a side you feel you ought to beat?
The real worry for Wales is that they failed to unleash their big runners at England. Jamie Roberts, who is the pivot for the whole thing, barely got his hands on the ball. This time the plan is to go back to the style they know best and expect it will deliver another BT Murrayfield win and and keep their Six Nations hopes alive for at least a little longer.
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