Paterson at pains to save Hadden

CHRIS PATERSON has revealed his pain at seeing Scotland head coach Frank Hadden’s job come under increasing pressure in the wake of another Six Nations defeat to Ireland.

The result means Scotland must win their final Six Nations game against England on Saturday to achieve the minimum target of two championship victories set by Hadden’s employers at the Scottish Rugby Union.

The former schoolteacher’s failure to achieve this in the last two seasons has resulted in various changes to his coaching staff, but he has been spared the chop. The buck will eventually stop with him, and defeat at Twickenham could end his near four-year tenure in charge.

Paterson’s relationship with Hadden dates back almost a decade, to the latter’s time in charge of Edinburgh.

“It’s winning for Frank; it’s winning for each other, and it’s winning for Scotland,” said Paterson, who made his 94th appearance. “What can you do about the game but lose sleep, think about firing into training on Monday, doing your best for Frank, for each other, for yourself and for the fans next weekend at Twickenham?”

Paterson claims he knew nothing of the two-win target set by the SRU but says the players can do more to take the pressure off their head coach.

“If you get your personal standards right, everything falls into place,” he said. “It’s a chain, it’s a rung of a ladder and it’s a cycle.”

Four victories in the last 16 internationals is pretty damning, and Scotland have not won back-to-back Six Nations matches since their last championship win over Ireland in 2001.

Hadden claimed his side should have been “out of sight” by the interval — and Paterson agreed, saying: “Although we were ahead for the whole of the first half, when we scored points, they scored points pretty soon afterwards.

“We didn’t really build on that period of being six points ahead for very long. That was pretty disappointing.”

Hadden said: “After half-time, it was a tale of elementary errors as far as we’re concerned. The thing about Ireland is they are remarkably error free.

“In the first half, it looked as if we were on the verge of a special result. In the second half, the attitude was there but the ball wasn’t in our control.

“Then after 54 minutes, when we had a line-out on the edge of the 22, it was extremely disappointing to see our scrum-half ‘scragged’ by the blind-side winger.

“Thereafter, we rarely had any joy pushing out of our half. We made one or two more immature decisions. But, then again, credit to Ireland for putting us under that kind of pressure.”

Hadden believes Scotland lost key line-outs in the second half and lock Jason White accepted his share of blame for that and errors at kick-offs. White said: “Kick-offs, I put my hand up. I made two many basic mistakes.”