Scottish Rugby
Robinson receives SRU backing
ESPNscrum Staff
March 12, 2012
Scotland coach Andy Robinson, Scotland v England, Six Nations, Murrayfield, Edinburgh, Scotland, February 4, 2012
Scotland boss Andy Robinson has presided over another difficult Six Nations © Getty Images
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Tournaments/Tours: Six Nations
Teams: Scotland

Scotland boss Andy Robinson will face a performance review at the end of the Six Nations, although the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) believes that the national side are on the right track.

Robinson's men suffered their fourth defeat of the tournament last weekend - losing 32-14 to Ireland - and will tackle a Wooden Spoon decider against Italy in Rome on Saturday.

The former England coach has a contract until 2015 and is not thought to be under threat, with SRU boss Mark Dodson confident that there have been positive signs in the emergence of young talent such as Lee Jones and Stuart Hogg, and an improvement in the style of play.

"We have a performance review at the end of every tournament, this one will be no different," Dodson said. "We have got to put all the information into the basket, not just the points on the board.

"Clearly we will be going hell for leather for a win in Italy, but when you look at the players we have brought through this year, the style of play we have been exhibiting, all of that will go into the mix and we'll talk to Andy about it at the end of the tournament. As far as we're concerned we are still very, very optimistic about what we can achieve here."

Scotland have now lost six games in a row stretching back to the Rugby World Cup, when they failed to reach the last eight.

"There is no getting away from the fact that we are not winning games," Dodson said. "I'm not going to walk away from that, but when you look at the kind of quality of rugby we're playing, look at the kind of people we're bringing through, this is good news for the future.

"We're on a journey here, this is not going to happen in a day. There will be snakes and ladders on the way. We went down a snake on Saturday but we will go up some ladders along the line."

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