Six Nations 2014: Scotland head coach Scott Johnson looks to ride the crest of ...

“Winning is contagious and once you start to get on a roll then you start to

believe you can do things. You’ll knock on the door a few times and when it

doesn’t open you’ll get a bit disconsolate, but you just have to work

through that.

“You have to put yourself in the competition. You have to learn how to do it,

but we have the gifts to do it. We’ve just got to do it more consistently.”

The issue of consistency was one Johnson returned to time and again as he

spoke at the RBS Six Nations launch in London. Looking back at a November

Test programme in which a comfortable victory over Japan was followed by

losses to South Africa an Australia, he explained that Scotland could reach

a high level of performance but that they let themselves down with their

failure to maintain the standard.

“I like to think we can beat anyone in this tournament, irrespective of who

they are,” he said. “But we need consistency in our performance to do it. In

the autumn, we chopped and changed our squad a bit, but there were 10-minute

bursts in the games when I was thinking we could beat anyone.

“We’ve now got a pretty settled squad going in [to the Six Nations]. It’s

probably not finished in terms of places for the World Cup, but it is pretty

settled and now it is about seeing if we can get settled performances too.

“So we’ve got to get more consistent performances. I see glimpses of our game

and I think we can compete with anyone, but we just want to do it for

longer. If we do that and we are competitive in every game then there is

growth in our team.”

As regards the fitness levels of his players at the moment, Johnson was much

more relaxed.

“I can categorically say that they [other nations] are not fitter than us.

They might be equal, but no one stands out as fitter than us. We are going

in with equal armoury. There is no issue there.”

Johnson also said that he was still hopeful that prop Euan Murray could yet

figure in the tournament despite suffering a thumb injury while chopping

wood at a team-building barbecue at Worcester Warriors.

“It just goes to show that the British shouldn’t do barbecues,” he said. “They

belong somewhere else.”

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Six Nations 2014: Scotland head coach Scott Johnson looks to ride the crest of ...