Scott Johnson has always had a slick line in patter but lately his act has started to wear a little thin. A man can expect to get away with the same old lines only so many times before his audience spot that he sounds like a stuck record. "We've got to get time in the saddle here," he said after Scotland's 28-0 defeat by South Africa in the autumn.
"With more time in the saddle, they will get better," he insisted after his side lost 28-6 to Ireland. "Time in the saddle is crucial," he added after Saturday's ignominious 20-0 defeat by England. One wonders if he is coaching rugby or riding. Johnson wants to buy his young team time to improve. He says he is worried that there will be a lot of irritated fans asking, "Are these the right players?" Not nearly so many, one suspects, as there are asking, "Is this the right coach?"
If a bad workman blames his tools, a bad coach carries on much as Johnson did after this match. Scotland's players, he said over and again, were "naive". But then he was the one who chose to drop the captain, Kelly Brown, who has 61 caps, and give a debut to Chris Fusaro. And he was the one who decided he could not even find space on the bench for Richie Gray, who has, admittedly, been a little short of his best form since the Lions tour last summer.
If Johnson's selection was strange, his strategy was poor. He explained that he wanted Duncan Weir to kick quick and often, which the fly-half duly did, booting away more than 45% of his possession. Johnson intended to "turn England".
The upshot was that Mike Brown, Jonny May and Jack Nowell were handed opportunities to run right back at Scotland. Between them England's back three made 30 runs for 225 metres and beat 15 defenders, and all in conditions which should have stymied them. These are dismal numbers for the Scots. Here are a couple more –their side had only 42% of the possession and 38% of the territory. It is easy to read too much into stats like that but they are strikingly similar to the numbers Scotland recorded against Ireland the previous week, when they had 41% possession and 37% territory. Despite all that, Johnson reckoned that "the plan was fine. The execution wasn't great."
Johnson will not be in the job much longer. In the summer he will become Scotland's first director of rugby, though he says somewhat oddly that, when he starts that role, he intends to spend just as much time coaching the senior squad as he does now. They say he works well with the players one on one but many wonder whether he is really the right man to implement any kind of broader strategy across a team, let alone an entire professional set-up.
Vern Cotter will take over as head coach once his contract with Clermont Auvergne is up. Cotter, 52, has been at Clermont for eight years. In that time they have won the Top 14 once and finished runners-up three times, as they did in the Heineken Cup last season, when they lost the final to Toulon by a single point. He has an impressive CV then, that also includes stints with Bay of Plenty and Canterbury Crusaders in his native New Zealand, if no experience at international level.
By the time Cotter arrives to start work the World Cup will be little more than a year away. He is on only a two-year contract, so will undoubtedly be judged in the large part on how the team perform in that tournament. He will have desperately little time to make an impression, let alone bring about an improvement. He should have started with Scotland already but the SRU did not have the money or the inclination to pay off the final year of his contract with Clermont and the club refused to release him from it. Instead he has been chipping in, while Johnson continues to run things in the interim. There has been plenty of criticism about it all. Gordon Bulloch, the former Scotland and Lions hooker recently called the set-up "very strange" and said the "inconsistency" of the situation was "not the best" for the players.
Johnson says that while he has been in charge he has been trying "to build for something, so that when Vern takes over there's enough maturity and depth around this squad, and athleticism, that we can compete against anybody."
The team have looked a long way short of that lately. Since they finished third in the 2013 Six Nations they have won two Tests, against Italy and Japan, and lost eight. In those three recent defeats by South Africa, Ireland and England, Scotland scored six points and conceded 76. And Saturday was the first time they had been shut out in the Calcutta Cup since 1978, when England won 15-0.
Despite that there is undoubtedly some serious talent in the Scottish squad, especially when their two fine wings, Sean Maitland and Tim Visser, both out injured, are fit. Cotter, who is said be an angry, honest and clear-thinking man who produces teams characterised by their aggression and work ethic, may well be the coach who can bring the best out of them. Johnson certainly does not seem to be.
