Head coach Kenny Murray praised his players’ resilience in bouncing back from last weekend’s painful 82-7 hammering by Ireland to lead Italy at half time in their final match of this age-grade Six Nations campaign.

But he also acknowledged that second-half slumps such as this will remain inevitable until such time as Scottish Rugby’s development pathways become fit for purpose.

The young Scots led 10-5 at the break thanks to a Dan King try plus a conversion and a penalty kicked by Richie Simpson, against a solitary try scored by Italian hooker Giovanni Quattrini.

However, they coughed up four unanswered scores in the third quarter with No.8 Jacopo Botturi, scrum-half Sebastiano Battara and tight-head prop Marcos Francesco Gallorini (twice) all crossing the whitewash.

A combination of Italy clearing their bench, and also picking up two yellow cards in quick succession – shown to replacement flanker Filippo Lavorenti for head-on-head contact with home scrum-half Ben Afshar and Lorenzo Elettri for playing the ball on the deck on his own line – curbed the visitors’ momentum during the final quarter.

Scotland managed a consolation try with eight minutes left through Will Robinson on the right, but Italy had the final say when replacement hooker Nicholas Gasperini muscled over in injury time.

This defeat leaves Scotland second bottom of the Six Nations table, ahead of only Wales who they beat in round two, and Murray admitted that more needs to be done to give the players a chance of being truly competitive against the top age-grade sides in the world.

“Defensively we were good, we really shaped their attack, but losing our tight-head prop [Eben Cairns] to injury early on put our set-piece under pressure, and in the second half we made too many unforced errors, couldn’t keep hold of the ball, and they absolutely dominated us from a set-piece perspective,’ he said.

“You just can’t play rugby without a set-piece because once you get into that cycle of giving away scrum penalties and having to defend driving mauls, it just takes it out of you. If you look at the size of the Italians, they were just bigger men than us, that’s the reality, and we really struggled against that.

“I’m disappointed that we didn’t win at least two games over the course of the tournament.

“If we’d been two out of two that would have been a brilliant start for us, so to be 36-31 up against England with eight minutes to go and not find a way to win is disappointing.

“Against France and Ireland, we were well beaten and there’s a lot of learning from that. They were just miles better than us. And, again, today we were outmuscled. It highlights where we are as an under-20s team and as a rugby-playing country. We need to be better, we need to develop our players better to compete at the highest level, because at the moment we are a fair bit off that.”

The team’s next target is the Junior World Trophy in Kenya in late July, which Scotland must win in order to secure promotion back into the top-flight World Championship for 2024.

“I’m absolutely not going to criticise the players, who have worked hard in training and their commitment on and off the field has been excellent,” concluded Murray. “They are a hard-working group who want to do well and that’s going to stand us in good stead for Kenya.

“All these guys [in the Scotland under-20s squad] are already joined up with Super Series [Super6] clubs for the ‘Sprint’ competition, so that will help us during the April/May window, before they come back into camp for the World Trophy during the summer.”

Scorers, Scotland – Tries: King, Robinson.

Cons: Simpson 2. Pen: Simpson.

Italy – Tries: Quattrini, Botturi, Battara, Gallorini 2, Gasperini. Cons: Brisighella 4, Sante.

Scotland: D King; K Johnston (W Robinson 66), D Munn, K Yule ( B Salmon, 50), G Gwynn; R Simpson, B Afshar (C Clare 70); C Davidson (M Surry 50), J Blyth-Lafferty (C Tait 50), E Cairns (R Deans 25), E Erskine (H McLeod 62), R Hart, L McConnell, S Derrick, J Morris (E Guy 52).

Italy: F Mey; A Gesi, D Passarella, N Bozzo, F Bozzoni (L Elettri 41); S Brisighella (G Sante 64), S Battara (L Casilio 70); D Aminu (R Bartolini 62) G Quattrini (N Gasperini 64), M Gallorini (A Artuso, 64) A Mattioli, P Turrisi ( E Pontarini 68), C Berlese (F Lavorenti 66), D Odiase, J Botturi.