Smith at a loss over the depowering of Scotland

When Tom Smith speaks, people listen. Very carefully. The Scotland prop is the Luciano Pavarotti of the sotto voce; when his voice drops to a whisper it is a short trip. And the ears prick up all the more attentively when Smith's utterances are in the aftermath of two desperately disappointing Six Nations defeats for his country: 36-6 at home to Ireland; 38-3 away to France.

We met at Northampton, where Smith was turning his attention – with some relief – to his club's Powergen Cup semi-final against London Irish this afternoon. At about the same time a couple of hundred miles to the north, Scotland's forwards coach, Jim Telfer, was explaining in typically forthright fashion why the hitherto indispensable lock, Scott Murray, had been ejected from the squad to meet Wales on Saturday. Whether strident, or in near silence, the message was much the same.

"We were all of us in danger of getting the chop," said Smith, who has 42 caps to Murray's 44. "There's a few of us breathing a sigh of relief. The championship hasn't gone well at all and we've got to shake things up a bit. Individually we've got to get our heads round the fact that we're not doing things right."

Meanwhile Telfer, gnarled coach of the 1997 Lions with whom Smith made his name, was summing up thus: "My problem with the Scottish pack is trying to get more belligerence into them, more drive, aggression and ball-carrying." Ouch. Or to put it another way, not enough ouch.

In replacing Murray, and dropping the out-of-form and apparently unfit Brendan Laney, Telfer and head coach Ian McGeechan are changing a losing team. Gregor Towns-end looks set for an ump-teenth chance to make things happen at fly-half, where Laney laboured last Sunday. At least the scrummage improved slightly in Paris, and the Scots would tamper at their peril with Smith's flair in the loose. But it seems a long time since November and the celebrations of a first ever win over South Africa.

"We played well that day," said Smith, "but South Africa were pretty poor, to be honest, and that was shown in all their results. I don't think any of us can say we played really well in France. Maybe Jason White [Murray's likely replacement against the Welsh] played well when he came on, but apart from that there was not too much to shout about.

"Getting over the gain-line was a big problem. It's difficult to attack if you're not breaking the line and getting in behind people. We've got to do the basics, like holding on to the ball, and getting every one doing their jobs: front row forwards clearing out rucks and mauls, backs running good lines. It's a reminder to us all that we're only there on the basis of performance."

Quiet or not, it was evident that Smith is pretty glum about the whole situation. Glum enough to do a Budge Pountney, who quit the international scene with a stinging attack on a perceived lack of proper preparation? "I won't be following suit, no," said Smith. "I've got to be part of the team turning things round at the moment, and thinking like that is the wrong way to go."

But Pountney's broadside appears to have hit its target. "He raised some pretty valid points, as far as I could see," said Smith. "He wasn't just spitting out his dummy. Yeah, there have been changes. There is water and recovery stuff around at training. Though if you wanted to run through a one-by-one list of the points he raised you'd have to go and dig someone up at the SRU and talk to them."

More significantly perhaps, Scotland have lost in Pountney the very type of destroyer that Telfer craves. "It's all right being technical, with players who can do this and do that," Telfer said. "But we need players like Martin Johnson, who can make inroads into the opposition with little more than real bulk."

Smith shares with Johnson the distinction of being the only men to play in the last six Lions Tests. They know what it takes at the highest level. So too do the long-serving Telfer and McGeechan, which makes it all the more perplexing that Scotland are misfiring.

The coaches acknowledge that in beefing up the second row they are taking a big gamble on dispensing with Murray's skills at kick-off and line-out. "I think teams have maybe sussed our line-out a bit," said Smith. "It's not worked in two games, so we've got to fix that quickly."

Today it is club duty for Smith, who can be loud enough when he wants to, according to another Northampton front rower, Robbie Morris. "He's a leader," Morris said. London Irish may be in for a Scottish backlash.