David Barnes: Scotland's woes of their own making

Supporting Scotland is tough going at the best of times, but the last four-and-a-bit months — since that abrupt wake-up call delivered by Ireland on the opening weekend of the 2019 World Cup — has been particularly fraught.

While Gregor Townsend’s team recovered from that nightmare to secure solid wins against the lower level opposition of Samoa and Russia in their next two pool matches, they were then run off the park by host nation Japan in a winner-takes-all Pool A qualification decider, meaning they failed to make it into the knock-out stages for only the second time ever.