Sunday 14 February 2016 16:39, UK
Ruaridh Jackson admits Scotland are “sick” of underachieving in the Six Nations, and need to forget about their heroic World Cup campaign.
The Dark Blues entered this year's Championship on a high after their exploits at England 2015.
Vern Cotter's men came within a controversial refereeing call of grabbing a place in the last four only to be denied by official Craig Joubert and the boot of Australian Bernard Foley.
But they have failed to carry the momentum generated at the tournament into the Six Nations and are now rooted to the bottom of the table after losing their first two games to England and Wales.
If they fail to beat Italy in Rome in a fortnight's time, they will have gone 10 matches in the competition without a win.
"It's a results based business," Jackson admitted after losing 27-23 in Cardiff. "At the end of the day when you put it down like that - nine straight defeats - it's not great viewing.
"Just look at the World Cup and how close we were to a semi-final.
"But we can't keep looking back at that. We've got to live in the present. This is happening right now.
"Last week against England wasn't how we wanted to play but against Wales we fronted up again and it was just one or two decisions which will get us over the finish line.
"We can't get too disheartened. We've got to stick together. There's a lot to play for and we need to keep pushing for those wins.
"We're tired of repeating ourselves but we do want to push on. We're sick of this feeling."
Jackson, though, insists the root of the problem is not in the players' minds.
"We will have to look at it and see what really accounted for the errors and where we put ourselves under pressure," he said.
"It's a hard one to take but we're going to have to push on. We've got a big game in two weeks against Italy and we know we need to go there and get back to winning ways.
"We haven't become a bad team overnight and we still had a great World Cup."
