Confused and demoralised, Scotland have a week to find the winning formula before facing a resurgent Wales side in Cardiff next Saturday. It is a tall order after a pitiful, pedestrian performance against a vibrant and exciting France team that ran everything and sucked the Scots into trying to match them. The result was a 27-6 defeat for the plodding home side.

While there was an element of luck or official blundering in all three French tries, the game still exposed a gulf of speed and skill between the teams. The French were always comfortable with the ball, linked well and handled securely. The Scots looked slow and dropped the ball so often it became boring, losing possession 30 times in the course of the game. They face more of the same next week, since the Welsh also likely to play with freedom and abandon, and need to find an answer quickly.

“They played with tremendous pace and their defence was outstanding,” Frank Hadden, the Scotland coach, said afterwards. “Whenever their front line let them down they scrambled brilliantly. The bounce of the oddly shaped ball played a big part. We should not take anything away from the quality of the French side but a bouncing ball played a part in all three of their tries and when we hacked through it did not bounce for us.”

A further cloud hangs over the camp, with Andy Henderson, the centre, getting involved a fight and because television pictures show he tried to butt Damian Trialle, his French opposite number, the Scotland camp will be sweating on the report from the citing commissioner with a ban on the cards.

More generally, there was a question mark over the officiating of Alain Rolland, the Irish referee with a French background. He missed a blatant forward pass in the build up to the first France try and was probably the only person in Murrayfield who did not think Vincent Clerc had crawled over the line and also gave a number of key penalties against Scotland.

“We lost the penalty count, as is normally the case with Alain [Rolland],” Hadden commented afterwards, adding. “France did a magnificent job of slowing the ball down, it was almost impossible to win fast ball. We will have to have a good look at that. We believed the last-minute change in referee would have a big impact - whether it did or not, nobody will ever know.”

While the officiating certainly did not help, it would be ludicrous to blame luck or Rolland for the result and, to be fair, Hadden did not try to. The French got the breaks because they were more ambitious in their approach to the game and eventually something had to go their way.

The real problem for Scotland, particularly in the first half was that their handling under pressure was fragile and their defence lacklustre, often allowing France 20 yards or more of space to exploit. It may have been a new-look France side but there is no team in the world better at using that kind of time and space.

Hadden and his coaches have a lot to fix and little time to make the essential changes: “It is a tough turnaround but we know our side is capable of performing better,” Hadden said. “We know the Welsh got off to a flying start but we will be going down there determined to provide the kind of shock they did against England.”

The sentiments were echoed by Jason White, the captain: “We will have a look at the video but as a group of players will have to accept that we made far too many individual mistakes, that is obvious,” he said. “I still have belief as captain that there is a huge amount of potential in this squad, it is a case of executing our skills on the pitch far better in a game of test match intensity.”