The man with more pressure on him to turn Scotland around than most was reduced to rushing out of the supermarket to avoid fans in the wake of the Calcutta Cup disaster.
However, Duncan Weir is never one to hide away from a challenge and the 22-year-old aims to put the England game behind him and try to guide the Scots back to winning ways in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico on Saturday.
What he would quite like for himself and half-back partner Greig Laidlaw, however, is some front-foot ball to operate with.
“It was pretty dark after the England game,” said Weir, who at least was one of the players who braved the media interrogation afterwards.
“You couldn’t take many positives away from that game, everybody went into their shells a little bit and a lot of soul searching was done.
“You have to take a backwards step and go back to basics in many respects. I’ve had my friends and family around me and that’s helped to lift my spirits, in that sense it was good to have a week off.”
Weir mostly went out walking his dog, but admitted he did not want to face disappointed fans in the street.
“The manner of the defeat was hard to take, you wanted to duck and dive a little bit,” he said.
“I know not everyone in the population knows about rugby but I remember a couple of uni students eyeing me up and down in the supermarket.
“I just wanted to get my messages and get out the door. Within the squad, there was a low atmosphere at first but honest words at the review of the performance.
“We all know it was well below par,” he continued.
“We know and appreciate what a huge honour it is to play for your country. We were all very honest about the game, as a group and as individuals.
“We expressed our feelings and opened up. There was a really good session talking about what went wrong.”
What positives Weir can take from the game is that he now knows just what the pressure cooker is like in top-class international rugby.
He said: “It’s a huge learning curve for me I’ve never been under so much pressure as I was in that England game.
“They were camped in our half for the entire second half and we just couldn’t get enough ball to break out. For me at 10 there were a lot of decisions to make and a lot of scanning to do, you need to see where the space is and find it.
“You also have to do this on the hoof and continually learn to do it far sharper. There were a lot of lessons learned in that game.”
With no attacking platform after the first 40 minutes in Dublin, the idea is to get running freely as they did to trouble the Irish in the first half of the first game.
“It all builds from the set pieces,” he said.
“Of course it’s not ideal when you lose an attacking position but rugby doesn’t go to plan all the time and it’s about how you react in that situation.”
“As a team we’ve been frustrated because we haven’t put any kind of passage of play together for a game and a half. All the lads know their roles a lot more clearly and I think we’ve ironed out the creases on the training field.”
Weir is at least getting a lengthy run at the position and it seems as if he will retain that through to the end of the championship, certainly if he can better former Scotland under-20 half-back Tomasso Allan in Rome on Saturday.