A Six Nations campaign which began so promisingly with victory over England at Twickenham last month fell flat for Scotland with defeat to Ireland on Sunday.
"It's a really difficult one to process," former Glasgow Warriors player Colin Gregor told BBC Radio Scotland.
"There were large parts of the game that had a high error count and were turgid almost.
"I'm just thinking, what did Ireland do to win that game? They did the basics, took their chances. They put enough pressure onto Scotland that they gave away some soft penalties. They wreaked havoc at the Scottish lineout. That really stifled any chance of Scotland getting momentum in the game, an attack platform.
"I guess they defended well enough when they had to. That last passage of defence was a prime example - Scotland couldn't get out of their own 10m line.
"On reflection, I don't know if Ireland deserved to win it but Scotland definitely didn't deserve to win it."
Former Scotland international Peter Wright felt that the Scots lost to an Ireland team not getting the most out of their backline.
"I hate to say this because they won the game but Ireland are poor," said Wright.
"If you look at that back division, that's a quality back division. That's a back division you'd look at and go, 'Wow, we're going to struggle here'.
"When that back division plays for Leinster, they rip teams apart. Why can they not do it with Ireland? Is it Farrell? Do they not believe in him as a coach? Do they not believe in his game plan?
"For me, all they did today was the old Joe Schmidt [game plan]. They tried to play a little bit of rugby in the first half; second half, they just went back to the old Joe Schmidt way of playing, just bludgeoning it up, which they're very good at. They keep the ball.
"You look at Henshaw and Ringrose, I didn't see either of those guys try to use their feet to evade defenders. They were just crashing it up, crashing it up. These guys are better players than that. If I was an Irish back, I'd be disappointed in the way [they played]. I don't know if Scotland made them play like that because of the way they defended, because Scotland defended pretty well at times.
"Is that Ireland's default game? They just go back to their old crunch it up ways. I thought in the first half that they did try to play a bit of rugby but didn't get a lot of success. It's that balance of, do you play rugby and try to show a bit of flair or do you play to win games? To be fair, they won the game but that's their old way of doing it. If they want to change and develop, I don't know if Farrell's the guy to do it."
Photo by Paul Devlin/Sportsfile
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