Women’s Six Nations: Are Scotland suffering post-World Cup hangover?

If last year’s Rugby World Cup represented a new high for Scotland women, it seems now we are seeing the comedown.

Reaching the quarter-finals, with superb victories over Wales and Fiji along the way, the Scots achieved everything they set out to do on the biggest stage of all.

With a new coaching team, led by Sione Fukofuka, and the introduction of a host of new players, there was always going to be a period of transition and this Women’s Six Nations campaign so far has proved to be a big old dose of reality.

After an encouraging start with victory in Cardiff, an 84-7 walloping at the hands of England and a surprisingly heavy 41-14 defeat in Italy have laid bare the scale of the rebuild.

“We’re seeing an element of just what it takes to perform at a World Cup,” said Fukofuka.

“There’s a number of teams that are now having challenges with player availability posed. The reality is that the players worked really hard in that pre-season, obviously, and performed really well [at the World Cup].

“But then a lot of them went straight back to club rugby. There wasn’t a lot of time for them to get that reset back into it. There’s also a natural attrition of that cycle, where we knew it was always going to be a bit of a transition coming in at the start of this cycle.

“Probably didn’t expect it to be this much of a transition, but what it has afforded us is an opportunity to expose and see some of those younger players who, in the next two to three years, will really feature.”