Six Nations 2022: Wales v Scotland - why Townsend's men lost in Cardiff

The entire plodding predictability of it all was the thing, the dreary throwback to an age where Scotland in pursuit of victory had no ideas, no penetration and no threat.

The final minutes at the Principality Stadium were a reminder of the fruitless grindathons of previous years, where 10, 15 and 20 phases came to nothing, where the final whistle came as a blessed relief, an end to the hapless banging at a door that never looked like opening.

Scotland are not out of the championship because of this. Their hopes of getting in the shake-up for the first time in 22 years are not dead and buried on the back of one defeat. A victory over France at Murrayfield in a fortnight — they'll be underdogs, but powered by anger as Wales were on Saturday — will put them back in the fight. That's not the point, though.

The point is we thought they were better than this. Scotland had won seven of their previous 11 championship matches. The four they'd lost were close. Last season they got done by Wales in Edinburgh because Zander Fagerson got sent off early in the second half. They lost to Ireland because their lineout completely fell apart.

Specific things cost them, but on Saturday there was no one thing that brought about their defeat. It was a myriad things. It was another narrow loss but the scoreboard was hardly a reflection of what went on.

Scotland left town with a losing bonus point they scarcely deserved. If we thought they had the minerals to go to Cardiff and finally soak up the local noise and colour and win then we were wrong. This was the most troubling Scotland defeat since the 2019 World Cup.

It wasn't so much that Scotland lost, it was the way they lost. They played no rugby. The negativity in their play was arresting.