Already reeling from another Twickenham defeat and Italy’s shock victory over France, Scotland face being without flanker Alasdair Strokosch for the rest of the 2013 RBS 6 Nations.
The 29-year-old Perpignan player suffered a fractured cheekbone after just 14 minutes of Scotland’s 38-18 loss to England on the opening weekend of the championship, which culminated in Italy’s heroic 23-18 defeat of the joint tournament favourites France in Rome.
Sergio Parisse’s team are Scotland’s visitors at Murrayfield on Saturday and what many thought would be Scotland’s best chance of a victory this season now looks a tall order against an Azzuri team brimming with confidence.
Meanwhile Strokosch will certainly miss that game and will know on Tuesday if he will play any further part in the campaign when he sees a specialist.
Scotland team doctor James Robson said: “It would seem he has a fractured orbit (area around the eye) but, as ever with such collision-type injuries, they can take time to settle down.
“He will be examined by Mr Martin Paley, the facial specialist at Spire Murrayfield Hospital on Tuesday.”
Strokosch struck an optimistic tone on his twitter account, stating “my eye doesn’t feel too bad, I’m hoping to be back sooner rather than later.”
Meanwhile interim head coach Scott Johnson, scathing about his team’s performance at Twickenham “as my old dad said, if it looks like a pig, it is a pig” has added 13 players to the squad for training this week, including eight players from the Scotland A team that beat the England Saxons in Newcastle on Friday night.
Former Howe of Fife centre Peter Horne returns to the squad, while ex-Dundee High players Alasdair Dickinson and Richie Vernon, and Stirling County products Grant Gilchrist and Sean Kennedy have also been called up.
In the meantime star act Stuart Hogg vowed the Scots would sort what went wrong at Twickenham and would use the match as a springboard back into the championship mix.
The 20-year-old full-back scored one try and set up another, while showing pace about the pitch and being increasingly used as a kicking option.
Johnson said Hogg had his best game for his country on Saturday, but the player wasn’t overly concerned with any personal achievement.
“I’m pleased with my performance but at the end of the day it’s a team game and 14 other boys as well have their jobs to do, and we’re all disappointed with the outcome,” he said.
“You could have the best game of the season, but if you lose it defeats the whole purpose.
“The collision area is one where we need to get ball on the front foot and we didn’t do enough of that in the attacking area. That’s disappointing but the positive is that we know where we went wrong and we can analyse what happened, park it and then we concentrate on next weekend.”
Hogg wants to see more ball get out to Scotland’s potent running back three as they take on the no-doubt hyper-confident Italians.
“We’ve all been watching Tim Visser play for Edinburgh and it’s great to have him alongside us now, and I thought Sean Maitland on his debut was outstanding,” added Hogg.
“Getting us with ball in hand maybe wasn’t quite our gameplan this weekend because it was always going to be a more dogged game, but next weekend we’re hoping it the same back three and get more ball in space.”
Scotland’s loss in Rome last year was “a career low” for Hogg and he wants to avoid that feeling again.
“I couldn’t think of a better way of getting back into the championship with a win against Italy after last year, finishing there at the bottom of the championship,” he continued.
“But that’s not even come up this year. Instead, we’re looking to win as many games as we can to push forward and try to win this championship.”
For the full match report see Monday’s Courier or try our digital edition.