THEY may have just missed meeting on the fateful ides of March, but two groups of modern gladiators will take to the field of battle in Rome this afternoon.
In terms of the glory on offer for the combatants, though, it is the most meaningless competitive clash a Scotland rugby team has contested.
Both the Scots and hosts Italy had hoped it might be a breakthrough season but, instead, the worst sides in the RBS 6 Nations meet to decide which finishes bottom of the table, whitewashed by the rest.
Scotland have lost all their matches on more occasions than any other team – nine times in all since the tournament became a Five Nations Championship with the introduction of France in 1910 – while Italy have a higher percentage of pointless finishes than any other side, with three in the 12 seasons. Yet never before have Scottish contested the final match of a championship in which neither they nor their opponents have registered even a draw so far.
In a season in which Scotland also failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the World Cup for the first time, their efforts have been a metaphor for everything that is wrong with Scottish rugby. Today's match comes towards the end of the first season under the new regime launched by Moir Lockhead at his first annual meeting as chairman, when he repeatedly said he was looking for some quick wins.
Like Scotland at the start of this season, his executives proved just about capable of taking the easy ones when they were available – Andy Robinson's men won warm-up games and World Cup ties against minnows Romania and Georgia – before making a complete hash of things when confronted with tougher tasks.
What is perhaps most disturbing in all of this is the nature of the response. That was brought home on the day before Scotland's meeting with Ireland last weekend when a leading Irish rugby writer observed the conviviality of the gathered media as Robinson entered the room by enquiring with some incredulity: "Is it always like this?"
The clear implication was that a coach with a similar record in Ireland could not possibly expect such an easy ride. That message was reinforced in a different way yesterday.
While I was driving to the airport to catch my flight to Rome, Radio Scotland's Thought for the Day was provided by a gentleman named Alastair McIntosh, who took Rangers' troubles as his theme. He referred to a blog on the subject that blamed the media for much of their plight, accusing them of feeding "sycophantic rubbish" to the masses.
It is hard not to conclude that the Scottish rugby media have similarly taken their collective eye off the ball when evaluating the performances of the national team. The job is to seek to offer proper perspective and, in that regard, it was refreshing to encounter some sense of awareness of what is really happening when Nick De Luca, the Scotland centre of Italian ancestry, when asked this week whether this match was make or break said it was "more a case of keep your head above water or break . . ."
The reality is Scotland and Italy have become all but competitively detached from the rest of the Six Nations, engaging in their own annual battle for the wooden spoon. Meanwhile, the rest jockey for the right to call themselves the best in Europe. Ireland and England have both registered fine away results against the World Cup finalists France in the past fortnight, while Wales are poised today to secure a third grand slam in eight seasons. Robinson's record is so poor that, if we did not know better, we might suspect him of being a fifth columnist for a cause he espoused just after he took up the job. At the IRB Nations Cup in Romania, he evangelised about the need to encourage lesser nations.
What could possibly make a stronger case for the inclusion of the likes of Romania and Georgia in an extended European competition than his team's results this season? After all, Ireland's margin of victory over Scotland last weekend was greater than Scotland's against Romania in the World Cup, at which Scotland were also unable to register a try against Georgia.
It is appalling that the only argument administrators put forward for refusing to further open up the Six Nations is an economic one. This is Europe's premier international rugby tournament and yet one third of the countries involved – Scotland and Italy – appear to be there simply to make up the numbers, just like those countries' representatives in the Heineken Cup.
At that, Italy are given some defence by historic perspective: the French suffered most of their whitewashes in their first dozen years in the tournament. Italy have only been involved since the "game went open", yet the phrase is far from accurate. It remains a closed, members-only club at the top end and it will continue to be so until the powers that be force the Six Nations to let the rest of Europe in.
Those who think that would be a disaster for Scottish rugby might be right since it would almost certainly result in Scotland slipping down the world rankings even faster than they have been doing.
Surely, though, that would be better than deluding themselves that Scotland are somehow entitled to a place among the elite when performances and results in no way merit it? Perhaps that is what has led to the widespread willingness recently to accept apparent improvements in performance based on reams of statistics . . . the equivalent, surely, of claiming Pete Sampras was a better tennis player than John McEnroe because he served more aces.
Victory today, then, would end Scotland's losing run at six, but it would change nothing in terms of our country's status in the world game.
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