“I’m more confident than ever that I can take this team forward,” Frank Hadden said defiantly as he and the Scotland team flew out of Italy after their latest defeat in Rome.

“My expectation is that the side will mature bit by bit over the next two or three years and we will make progress. Things are never easy in Scottish rugby, there is a big problem with access to the players, I’ve lost about seven players from the World Cup quarter-final squad and in some positions the reserves are starting to creak, but I’m totally confident about the future.”

Hadden says that though he is still in a bit of a state of shock over Saturday’s game and the loss after getting to a winning position, he has already started to turn his thoughts to Argentina and the victory over there in the summer that is vital to getting Scotland a good seeding in the 2011 World Cup.

Speaking for the first time about the position, Hadden is fully aware of the implications of breaking into the top eight in the IRB world rankings. They could have done that on Saturday had they beaten Italy by a big enough margin, but now they need to beat one of the top three, South Africa, New Zealand and Argentina (who they play twice), if they are to have any chance of making the breakthrough before the cut-off date in December.

“The next task is to get a win in Argentina,” Hadden says. “A top-eight rank would not guarantee an easy draw in the World Cup but being outside that would make a really tough draw more likely. So first we have to go to South America and see what we can achieve there against an incredibly tough side.”

The general expectation is that Argentina will not be as strong as they were when Scotland played them in the World Cup with the likes of Augstin Pichot having retired, but that they will pose a formidable challenge on their own turf.

The need for a win means Scotland may not be able to experiment as much as they usually would on tour, but Hadden sees the emergence of the likes of Alasdair Strokosch, Graeme Morrison, John Barclay and Ross Rennie as genuine international class players as one bonus from a disappointing campaign.

What Hadden cannot know at the moment is how his preparations for the summer will go. He sees the dreadful start to the Six Nations as partly a case of chickens coming home to roost after a large number of players left Scotland. While some clubs have proved to be helpful in releasing players for international training sessions, others have proved difficult.

“The first thing to do is get as many players as we can back playing in Scotland,” Hadden says. “Something also needs to be done about the IRB regulations. England are able to buy their way out of the issue, but we don’t have that luxury and it does cause problems if we are losing players from training, they are having to fly back to their clubs in the middle of training weeks. If we had had them all in Scotland we could have had two weeks before the Six Nations and two two-week spells in the middle, which would have made so much difference to us.”

Despite that, Hadden refuses to be downbeat about Saturday’s game, pointing to the disruption in the build-up, the early reshuffle quickly followed by the penalty try.

“I could not have been more proud of what the players did for the next 50 minutes,” he added. “Any side going to Rome would have been proud of the way they dug deep and showed such incredible character. It was incredibly cruel that one or two key decisions went against us and the interception from the world-class Sergio Parisse turned the game.

“Remember that came as the result of an exceptional passage of play from Scotland. We had had all the territory and had been camped in their half since the break. Our defence was in excellent shape, they never looked like breaking it down and our set-piece, after a shaky start, was solid.

“I thought it was just a matter of time before we scored and when Craig Smith went through I felt we were going to score, go 14 points clear and go on to head into the distance.”