Several English players found it hard to maintain their grace and composure in post-match interviews following their narrow failure to capture the Six Nations title.
Mike Brown, Courtney Lawes and Ben Youngs found it impossible to get through their media engagements without aiming a few jabs in the direction of Scotland and Italy.
One of the Scotland's greatest ever outhalves has hit out at the suggestion that the Scots lay down and didn't try during the game in Murrayfield. John Rutherford held the no.10 jersey the year Scotland claimed the Grand Slam in 1984 and was assistant coach when they won the Five Nations in 1999.
The general tenor of his response was more 'Ireland are bloody good' rather than 'sure we can't help that we're shite' though he did gently point to Scotland's lack of experience.
There is no way Scotland weren’t trying. That's just nonsense. Ireland are a bloody good team, without a single weakness. A lot of those Irish players are right at the top of their game at the moment, while a lot of the Scotland players are really inexperienced.
It is absolute crap to say the Scotland boys gave up. Those players just aren't like that. I did worry about Scotland on Saturday because Ireland are so strong and they knew they had to score a lot of points. We are missing key players and we are low on confidence. If anything, it could have been worse.
It's been another grindingly depressing Six Nations for Scotland. The recriminations will go on and are familiar to anyone who recalls Irish rugby in the late 1990s. Scotland-based Irish journalist Tom English wrote this interesting article for the BBC on the state of Scottish rugby, which he proclaims is '30 points and 17 years behind Ireland'. Read it here.
