A fixture often positioned as an unloved epilogue to the Six Nations tournament has this year become an enticing opener for both teams at Murrayfield. Scotland and Italy have met in the last round of fixtures seven times since the five became six, but not since 2000 have they done so on the first weekend, and then it was in Rome.
For the Scots, in particular, the game represents the best opportunity to get the Championship off to a convincingly solid start – something they signally failed to do 12 months ago in Cardiff. With Ireland due to visit Edinburgh a week later victory can give the home team the boost they need to believe in themselves as genuine contenders.
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By the same token, however, this game is a threat. Put bluntly, if you cannot beat Italy at home what chance do you have of achieving anything substantial?
The Italians may take exception to such a baldly rhetorical question but, while Scotland have historically been their most susceptible opponents, the notion that these two teams are the tournament’s perennial also-rans has been undermined in recent seasons by the home side’s modest blossoming.
Gregor Townsend’s team have finished out of the bottom two for the past three years while Conor O’Shea, in office since the summer of 2016, has yet to win in the Six Nations as Italy’s coach.
The Irishman came close to breaking his duck in this fixture last year but Greig Laidlaw’s astute leadership steered Scotland from a dozen points down to a 29-27 victory. The ability to win while playing badly was a sign of growing maturity in the squad although the key issue as ever is whether the Scots are getting better relative to their rivals or only compared with their own recent past.
Laidlaw has seen at first hand how his half-back partner, Finn Russell, has flourished since moving to France while outside the fly-half the debutant Sam Johnson provides an extra point of attack, lessening the reliance on Huw Jones. For the captain, however, victory will be achieved not so much by individual performances but by collective stamina.
“We’ve talked a lot about the first 20 minutes being massively important for us,” Laidlaw said on Friday. “We’ve set a plan in place for that period and we believe if we can deliver on that we’ll put ourselves in a good place for the rest of the game.
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“We’re going to back our fitness. If we can make teams play for 80 minutes, then as a group we believe that will play into our hands.”
Unsurprisingly O’Shea believes otherwise. “Ball-in-play time doesn’t worry us now,” he said. “A year ago, two years ago, it might have worried us, in fact it would have probably frightened us. But in some of the games we’ve played the ball has been in play maybe 42 minutes, so ball in play, no issue. We’ll get around the pitch and we’ll try and play ourselves.”
Michele Campagnaro, in particular, has been charged with getting around the pitch, having been selected at wing rather than his usual position of outside-centre.
“We want him to have that kind of licence to get involved as much as he can off the wing,” O’Shea said of the Wasps back. “It’s getting the best players on the pitch that we feel will do a job.”
Campagnaro appears happy to have a licence to roam. “The way I play it doesn’t really change that much for me,” he said. “Obviously it’s a bit different but I will try and get involved as much as possible in the midfield too. For me it’s also a matter of instinct, to go and play in the midfield and try to get my hands on the ball.”
Campagnaro will attack the Johnson-Jones axis in the hope that it is a soft centre in the Scots’ defence. The visitors will also hope to find some joy at the breakdown where Scotland still come off second best too often and are depleted by the absence through injury of John Barclay and Hamish Watson, among others.
But Scotland, buoyed by a European season in which Edinburgh and Glasgow qualified together for the Champions Cup quarter-finals for the first time, do have greater strength in depth than before.
They may be no fitter than Italy but they are a better-balanced team and, as long as they remain composed enough to impose their game plan, should get the win they need to start a fire under their campaign.