Farrell still awaits defining victory with error-strewn Ireland in danger of fluffing lines every time script is cast aside

“Come on boys. It’s time to go.”

As a sage Scot once averred in another code, “Lads, it’s Spurs.” When the big moments arrived, this was men against boys.

But, yet again, an Irish rugby team, grappling with their identity and shorn of any ambition in attack, and instead roused by their unmatched ability in the contacts and collisions, struggled over the line by managing not to implode.

Imprisoned by their own insecurities, but reinforced by their historical ability to dominate these fitful opponents at key moments, the quest for a performance hinting at something of coherence remains elusive.

But for Andy Farrell, a coach whose tenure remains under the deepest suspicion and scrutiny, the result was all that mattered in Murrayfield and he owes the compliant Scots some measure of gratitude as once more in this fixture they fatefully – and fatally – flattered to deceive.

It seemed not to matter in the immediate glow of victory that Ireland, too, continue to deliver far less than what should be expected of them, but it will do should they once more fail to stem another contemporary imbalance against the visiting English next week.

Irish rugby supporters are still awaiting a signature victory from this coaching regime, not to mention the 80-minute performance yet again demanded by their coach in advance of this game, one that yet again proved to be so frustratingly beyond their grasp.

Twenty-four hours after France and England delivered a display of sublime rugby, Ireland and Scotland served up an error-strewn effort lacking in cohesion and fluidity, befitting their status as the also-rans of northern hemisphere rugby.

Nominally, this was a result that placed Ireland second in the Six Nations standings but the table does lie; this was a second-class encounter between two average sides.

In a week when CVC snapped up rugby’s future for a song, even the sober-suited money men would have recognised that Saturday’s spectacular showpiece, and not this dour affair, represents the future.

For Ireland, it is all about the present, as they stutter onwards towards their championship conclusion, with little logic or form, save the doughty efforts of their forwards and the energy of defiant demons like Robbie Henshaw and Keith Earls, to suggest they can reverse recent trends and topple a resurgent English side.

“We’ll find out next Saturday, won’t we?” mused Sexton.

“We feel that we have been building, that we were a bit unlucky in the first couple of games, but even though they have had a couple of bad results they are a team that was in the World Cup final and won the Grand Slam last year.

“They won the Autumn Nations Cup so they are a top, top team and we have to prove that we can match them and put in a performance that can beat one of the top teams because we haven’t done that as of yet.”

England remain a side questing peaks that can only be attained by producing some of the irrepressible rugby they produced on Saturday afternoon against kindred spirits in blue.

Ireland remain stuck in a rut and the momentary pleasure provided to those who only demand that the side win at all costs is not sustainable.

The repeated phrases in the aftermath of a victory Ireland had to so belatedly secure through Jonathan Sexton’s late penalty, having gifted Scotland an unlikely tilt at a great escape, was “next job”.

The trouble is that their inability to complete even the most mundane tasks in succession without committing egregious errors, whether with or without the ball, is undermining any attempt they might have to unfurl any sense of grand ambition or vision.

And so while they may be adequately – even if so uncomfortably – equipped to deal with a fitful Scottish threat, there remains little evidence that, unlike the English or France, countries always eyeing a more substantial path to progress, Ireland have the necessary facility to adapt and evolve their game.

“Saturday was a game for the purists,” Andy Farrell noted, adding that both England and France would have been deserved winners.

The game he witnessed, he admirably admitted, was not one for the purists; he did not add that perhaps neither side deserved to win either, but for entirely different reasons, as it indeed looked might happen as the sides were locked 24-24.

Scotland had once again talked a good game in the build-up, as if lulled into the delusion that Ireland’s stifled creativity would somehow allow them the necessary leeway to ensure their creative forces could thwart the destructive impulses of their opponents.

But one of rugby’s eternal truths was upheld, one that has so often informed this fixture’s narrative this century.

Simply put, it was that Ireland’s self-assurance that they could predominantly emerge the strongest in the physical stakes would ultimately hold sway.

And, what is more, this would preclude any necessity for them to prove that they were any more skilful on the ball than the capricious Scots.

A solid start and a rousing finish could have been undone but there was always the sense that not only would Ireland find a way to win, but that Scotland would find a way to lose.

As the teams were locked in temporary stalemate, they did just that, Ali Price conspiring to fluff an exit kick, his side failing to profit when, for the umpteenth time, the Irish had handed them possession with an errant, unthoughtful boot.

There will be those, and Cian Healy is one of them, who will argue that there is no such thing as an imperfect victory.

“There is another place we can go to. In the first 20 minutes, we definitely got through a lot of what we wanted to get through and we put some good stuff together.

“After that it was probably starting to get a bit messy and we had to just play it as it was instead of, I suppose, going off the script. Being able to do that is a good thing.”

Whether the script is fit for purpose next week remains to be seen. It has not been in the recent past.

And the present informs us that when they seek to depart from it, they are incapable of remembering their lines.