IT IS strange even now almost a year on trying to work out what went on in the 2007 championship.
Unpredictable? That doesn't cover half of it.
There was a lot of excitement and expectation going in and from the start I remember heading to Twickenham confident that we could do a job, having beaten them in 2006, had a reasonably good autumn ser
ies and knowing they had a new coaching staff and new players.
It was a good, close game early on and it was in the balance until the second half where we lost two really quick tries and that was it gone; they then got a lucky try and it turned from being what could have been a very tense last 20 minutes where our confidence and continuity could have put them under pressure to a pretty soft last 20.
The Wales game was better and we got a lift from that because we played a lot of good rugby, believing that we could take it to them and had to bounce back from the England defeat, and although I ended up scoring all the points with penalties they came from the pressure the team created.
At that point I felt we had regained our self-confidence and though we knew it was still going to be tough, we felt we could really trouble Italy, Ireland and France. But then came the freak game.
I still, now, can't get my head around the start to the Italian match.
I wish we could just forget it ever happened, but it's there in the record books – three tries in six minutes.
I got some stick after that game for not kicking all the penalties we got in their half, but one or two were a bit far out, others were perfect opportunities to kick for touch and look to drive them over and, to be fair, everyone knew that we needed more than six or nine points to win the game.
We almost got there, but another mistake from a restart cost us late on, when we'd got within a score of them, and Italy stuck in well to win it. It was difficult then; everyone was writing us off because of how we'd gifted those tries.
But we knew we hadn't gone from a decent, growing team to worthless just like that; we dug deep in ourselves, tried to switch off from the criticism and came out fighting against Ireland and nearly beat them.
It was a real see-saw game with the Irish – we scored, they scored, we scored, they scored sort of thing – and if it had gone on for a few more minutes we'd probably have won. But, things changed in our approach and we went for a more physical back line and style in the last game against France, which had plusses and minuses.
Some perhaps felt we were experimenting for the World Cup, that maybe the championship wasn't as important this year, but that definitely wasn't how the players saw it.
We were desperate to win at the Stade de France in Paris, and desperate to avoid the wooden spoon.
It is always a proud moment when you run out to represent your country, and to captain the team again through a championship was special for me.
There were little high points, some good tries, the win over Wales and seeing our young players emerging and learning on the Test stage, but it was ultimately hugely disappointing that we didn't achieve our goals.
The positive you have to take from it is that everybody, players and coaches, learned from that experience, we learned from the Rugby World Cup and I believe supporters will see a stronger Scotland squad in 2008 because of the disappointments we experienced in 2007.
The full article contains 642 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
