ROME -- Leading his team to a 36-20 win over Italy, ‘Man of the Match’ Scotland captain Greig Laidlaw thoroughly deserved his title after kicking 21 points for his team.  The strong amount of kilted support no doubt spurred the Scots onto their first win after nine consecutive Six Nations game losses.

 The atmosphere in the Roman stadium was electric as complete silence fell for ‘O Flower of Scotland’ and as the Scots raised their voices for their, at times hauntingly beautiful, national anthem one couldn’t help getting goose-bumps and I heard two Italians turn to each other to remark on what a good anthem it was.  After their win at Murrayfield last year the Italians were more confident than they have been this championship as they brought their rousing anthem to a close and the game got under way.

 It was Italy who got off the mark first with a penalty kick from Kelly Haimona 8 minutes in, however the number of knock-ons and missed chances from both teams were not boding well for the rest of the match.  Then John Barclay managed to make it over the line for Scotland’s opening try, with a beautiful offload from Hogg, and suddenly this game got a whole lot more interesting.

 The second try, this time from John Hardie after a set-up from Finn Russell, came 20 minutes in, yet the Italians’ spirit was not dampened, with fans cheering and singing to the very end.  At half time Scotland led 17-10, but the fans could not breathe a sigh of relief knowing all too well how their national team can lose momentum in the second half – and looking solely at who had the ball you might have thought that Scotland had slipped back into their old ways.  They made 152 tackles to Italy’s 88 after half time – necessary as they only had 24 percent possession.

 Despite this and scores from Leonardo Ghiraldini and Marco Fuser, as well as Scotland being briefly two team members down, losing Finn Russell and WP Nel to the sin-bin, it was Tommy Seymour’s late try and Scotland’s skills in the scrums that really sealed the match, somehow managing to score 19 points despite their paltry possession.

 So for the first time in two years Scotland will go into a Six Nations game with a victory behind them, but can they break the streak and win two in the same season for just the second time in a decade?  The next match will be France in Murrayfield on March 13 and if the French are given 76 percent possession in one half they are likely to do a lot more damage than the Italians were able to.

 Queues leaving Rome's Stadio Olimpico were filled with happy Scots, and Italians who were simply pleased that their team had fought well and not suffered such a resounding defeat as at the hands of the English earlier in the month.  This good feeling bubbled over around Rome where supporters were keen find out the outcome of the England-Ireland match (21-10 to the English) and I even stumbled across a couple of bagpipers teaching some Italians how to Scottish reel – demonstrating a high-spirited, if somewhat messy, Strip the Willow outside the Pantheon.

 The only thing to mar the event was a small group of drunken Scotland supporters, obvious from their kilts and pasty complexions, who trashed a 500-year-old fountain in Monti later that evening as the revelry continued.  Again it was councillor Nathalie Naim, who we’ve heard of previously as being the protector of Rome’s fountains against drunken tourists, who denounced them with a video posted on her Facebook page – informing her followers of the amount of beer cans and shards of glass now in the fountain, saying that “not one carabiniero and not one policeman had intervened.”

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