Scotland’s rugby journey through the 2025 Six Nations tournament has been full of excitement and disappointment for fans as the team finish at a downing fourth place in this year’s final standings.
Despite the electric levels of support and pride from Scottish fans during every match, the end result leaves the dispiriting feeling of defeat to linger for yet another year.
The team opened their 25th round of the Six Nations with a promising victory of 31-19 against Italy, boosting the hopes of fans that the Scots may finally be strong enough to beat their third place record since the tournament’s commencement in 2000, however the hopes slowly began to fade following the next two painful losses of 32-18 to Ireland in Dublin and 16-15 to England in Twickenham.
Scotland learned from the defeats and came back with a relieving win of 35-29 against Wales at Murrayfield, to then suffer another hard-hitting loss of 35-16 against France in the closing match in Paris.
The games have been contained a mixture of positive and negative moments, with a number of fantastic tries by the likes of Huw Jones, Tom Jordan and Blair Kinghorn; yet there were also a number of unnecessary blows such as vital conversions and penalty opportunities that were missed, or the yellow cards and knock-ons that could have been avoided.
The removal of highly rated players Finn Russell and Darcy Graham that was caused by intense head-to-head contact between the two in the first half of the Ireland campaign in Dublin also proved detrimental to team’s overall performance in the second game of the series.
Online backlash
There has been plenty of criticism of the team’s performance this year, with people shaming the many silly mistakes that were made by the players during the games, especially Finn Russell’s shocker of three missed conversions against England which led to their defeat, alongside the unacceptable number of handling errors, throwing away penalties and loss of confidence
Following the heartbreak after the second and third matches, a key talking point for disheartened fans were the number of poor decisions made by the referee during the England game, which has sparked a lot of rage from people online.
Many social media users commented on a mishap during the derby game in Twickenham, highlighting how a ‘clearly un-grounded’ try by the opponents was accepted by the referee who received many complaints of unfairness.
One Instagram user commented: “Unless the ref was looking somewhere else… that ball was not grounded. Not a try any day of the week… in my opinion!!!”
Another online fan stated: “I only hope @worldrugby make sure that was the referee’s first and last Six Nations. He and the TMO were awful today – possibly the worst I’ve ever seen.”
This particular loss of the historic annual Calcutta Cup match against England was a hard pill to swallow for both the players and fans because if the game was won by the Scots, it would have earned the country a never-before completion of 5 wins of the cup in a row.
However, there were still many memorable performances from the players in the tournament to shine some light on: the hat-trick of tries from centre Huw Jones against Italy, the almost hat-trick from full back Tom Jordan against Wales, and the incredible efforts heading towards the try-line from Darcy Graham, Finn Russell, Blair Kinghorn and Duhan Van De Merve throughout.
Improvement needed
Although this year once again proved unfortunate for Scotland, it appears that head coach Gregor Townsend is aware of where wrongdoings occurred and where improvement is required for next year.
He reflects on the match against France saying: “Strangely, probably the two best performances this year that happens were defeats, to England and to France, but we can take a lot from those two games as we look to next year and beyond when we have those challenges again.”
Finn Russell also commented on the improvement required after their crushing defeat in the match against England, stating: “As a team, we need to get better. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? When we do get chances, we need to take them and have that ruthless edge that a lot of people talk about, but it’s tough to actually do.”
The next instalment of the Six Nations series in 2026 will once again unite Scottish fans all over the country. But as to whether our hope for improvement will show through in the squad next year, only time and training will tell.
Featured image credit: Six Nations Rugby
Third year journalism student at Stirling University
