THAT Italy can provide an unsettling experience for Scotland in the RBS Six Nations Championship is nothing new, indeed it dates right back to the very first full Test match between the countries on the continent.
The Italians are still the new faces in the tournament but Scots may feel they have caught up with the UK's most northerly nation quicker than anyone else.
David Johnston certainly has reason to feel that way, his coaching career having been scra
pped within days of Scotland losing to the Azzurri in Treviso a decade ago.
Johnston and Richie Dixon, a promising new coaching team, had taken charge of the national side following the 1995 Rugby World Cup and steered Scotland to a Grand Slam decider against England in their first championship.
They lost narrowly, but showed they wanted to develop a new brand of enterprising rugby.
In 1997, they scored more points than any Scottish side in the championship, but struggled to match the scoring feats with victories, and after a record loss to South Africa that autumn headed into a first Test match in Italy hoping to lift the nation again ahead of the championship.
They went down 25-21, Rowen Shepherd, the full-back, scoring all of Scotland's points, and Jim Telfer, then SRU director of rugby, decided the coaches' time was up.
He shifted Dixon back into his other Murrayfield post while Johnston returned to concentrate on his legal career.
Reflecting on that match in 1998, Johnston insisted it was merely the final straw for a Scottish Rugby Union undergoing structural change.
"To be perfectly honest the writing was definitely on the wall for me at national level," he said. "Jim (Telfer] and Ian McGeechan had come back from a successful Lions tour and were more involved in what became a four-man management team, and while Richie and I would have been daft to ignore the lessons of a fantastically successful Lions tour, he and I were definitely being squeezed out of the picture.
"We were trying to move to a 15-man expansive style of rugby – Richie coached the backs to play like forwards and I coached the forwards to pass like backs.
"The first year was fantastic. We played a brand of rugby the Six Nations hadn't seen, ran France off their feet and lost by just four points in a Grand Slam decider to an England team that stuck the ball up their jerseys.
"But we went to New Zealand and had our eyes opened – if we were in second-gear in developing that game, the All Blacks were almost in overdrive.
"We scored 31 points against them, and they scored 62, but that was when a number of us saw how to change Scottish rugby, both on and off the field.
"I was a leading part of that exercise in pushing for change, but the then committee of the SRU were not in agreement – there were some there wholly resistant to change – and that put me at loggerheads with the SRU.
"There was a lot going on off the field with terrible mis-handling of the transition to professionalism, and I didn't fit – the Italian game was a bit loose, and it would have been better not to lose it, certainly, but that game just became a reason to get rid of me.
"Other coaches have lost to them since and kept their jobs – I am on a very short list of people sacked by the SRU. It is never nice to be sacked, and it wasn't then, but I enjoyed a lot of my time coaching the national side and I hope they do well this weekend."
It was true that the 2000 defeat, the first match between the nations in the new Six Nations Championship, did not cost McGeechan his post, but many still point to the next defeat in Rome, in 2004, and subsequent scrappy win at Murrayfield in 2005 as leading to the downfall of Matt Williams as Scotland's coach.
The record of two wins and three defeats away to Italy adds perspective to the test Scotland face against the tournament's newcomer this afternoon.
Frank Hadden, the current Scotland coach, watched his side squeeze past the Italians by three points in his first visit to Rome in the finale of the 2006 campaign which included home wins over France and England, and he weathered the storm of a record loss at Murrayfield last season, after his team shot themselves in the foot with a disastrous opening spell.
But the current coach is under no illusions as to the difficulty awaiting coaches whose sides have always struggled to dispose of the Azzurri.
Record in Italy• 2006: Italy 10, Scotland 13
Chris Paterson scores 10 of Scotland's 13 points as they end a solid campaign with three victories.
• 2004: Italy 20, Scotland 14
Simin Webster try no consolation as Matt Williams' side slump to a wooden spoon whitewash.
• 2002: Italy 12, Scotland 29
Far and away Scotland's best display on Italian soil. Tries came from Gregor Townsend and Brendan Laney, plus 19 points from Laney's boot.
• 2000: Italy 34, Scotland 20
Scotland were reigning champions and Italy making their Six Nations debut. Inevitably the Italians won, with Diego Dominguez the chief destroyer.
• 1998: Italy 28, Scotland 24
This humiliation in Treviso, after leading 18-9 at half-time, cost Scotland coaches Richie Dixon and David Johnston their jobs.
The full article contains 921 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
