Scotland head coach Andy Robinson blamed his side’s lack of cutting edge after they slumped to their third RBS 6 Nations defeat – going down 16-12 in Italy.
Italian replacement Pablo Canavosio scored the only try of the game late on to push Scotland closer to the wooden-spoon.
And Scotland’s defeat in Rome means they are still without an away win in the competition for four years, leaving Robinson with a huge task on his hands.
He said: “Any losing experience is pretty deflating. I thought the players put a lot of effort into their performance but we didn’t manage the scoreboard well enough.
“Our execution was poor in that first 10 minutes, we dropped a number of balls and that was frustrating for the way we wanted to play.
“We got back in there with some very good play from Dan Parks but in that first 10 minutes we lost the contact battle but also dropped a lot of balls which allowed them to get the six points.”
And Robinson’s sentiments were echoed by Dan Parks, who kicked all of Scotland’s 12 points.
Parks added: “We had a few scrums on the line and a lineout on the line – teams are scoring at those opportunities, but we didn’t.”
