When you are captain of the national side for the first time, a winning start in the role has to be the priority. Rory Darge got that all right, but, like head coach Gregor Townsend, the Glasgow forward was quick to acknowledge that there had been some glaring failings in Scotland’s performance yesterday, despite the 25-13 final score.
"It's a mixed bag,” the 23-year-old openside said. “We had some really good stuff, especially in defence. Loads of physicality and effort shown, but we didn't look after the ball sometimes. Obviously the conditions played a part, but I still think we could have done more to look after it.”
If the outcome of the game was uncertain until the end, the key passage of play was probably the first ten minutes of the second half. Scotland, who had gone in at the break having just fallen 6-5 behind, needed to reassert themselves - and they did exactly that, having been told by Darge exactly what was required.
"I said we could bring more comms about what we were doing,” he continued. “We obviously touched on defence - we hadn't conceded a try up until that point - and looking after the ball, which is where we were going wrong, the contact area. That sort of stuff.”
Darge was far from being a lone leader, however, and also paid tribute to some of the more experienced names around him - not only the two official vice-captains, centre Chris Harris and lock Sam Skinner, but also his Warriors team-mates Ali Price and Kyle Steyn. "When I had the captaincy at under-20s, the thing that I took from it was to focus on my performance, first and foremost. I think I did that. And the vice-captains, not just Chris and Sam, but Ali and Kyle Steyn, my captain at Glasgow - they told me they would support me throughout the week, which really helped.”
Not only that support, but also the collective togetherness of the Scotland team, was a crucial factor in the eventual victory. And while he was more than happy to discuss the shortcomings in the performance, Darge’s most important emotion was a feeling of encouragement that so many things had gone right in the first game of pre-season.
"Yeah, hugely. It's our first outing. We've tried to simulate it in training, but I guess there's nothing really like it when you go out, especially at Murrayfield. There's a lot going on, but I thought we showed a lot of character. We were behind at half-time, but we showed loads of character and our defence was really good.”
Although there were some sunny patches during the match, it was, on the whole, a dreich afternoon, with the rain beginning before kick-off. But Darge, although mentioning the effect that the damp conditions had had on the play in general, was disinclined to use the weather as an excuse for his team’s shortcomings.
"I don't think we've trained indoors this pre-season. But we've been lucky with the weather - we've not had rain all week until the warm-up. It's not an excuse. We've all played rugby for long enough and we've all played rugby in the rain before, having lived in Scotland for our whole life.”
While Darge and the rest of the Scotland camp were moderately pleased by their own performances, Italy coach Kieran Crowley was not too despondent at his team’s defeat. "There are a lot of positives we can take out of that,” he said. “It was exactly the same as March [when they lost 26-14 to Scotland in the Six Nations].
“Later in the game a couple of our set plays went awry. We didn't execute them as well as we could have done and gave the ball to Scotland. They got the momentum, so good on them.
“But we stuck at it. We showed a lot of fight and some of our plays were reasonable. We just got caught a little bit late in our chuck tackles - they held us up and slowed our ball down, which didn't allow us to get going as we would have liked. It was the first game in 12 weeks for some of them so we will take the positives, look at the other things and move forward.”
