LOSING one game undermines your chances of winning the Six Nations; losing two invariably obliterates them.

The pressure is therefore very much on Scotland as they prepare to visit France in a fortnight after following up their win over Italy with yesterday’s 22-13 defeat by Ireland.

The biggest challenge when facing the French these days tends to be dealing with the size of their pack, who will steamroller over you unless you get your defence spot on.

But Stuart McInally, for one, is confident Scotland can meet that challenge – not out of any blind optimism, but because his Edinburgh team have already taken on two similarly massive French sides in the Champions Cup this season and got the better of both.

Granted, Edinburgh lost to Montpellier in the first round of pool games, but even there they finished more strongly after getting off to a slow start.

And they went on to beat three-time former champions Toulon home and away, before showing how much they have learned by beating Montpellier at BT Murrayfield to qualify for the quarter-finals.

“It’s going to be a huge challenge in France, similar [to Ireland] in terms of physicality,” the Scotland hooker said. “Big, heavy forwards. But we’ve played against Montpellier and Toulon this year, so we know what it’s like.

“I’ve taken great confidence from the Edinburgh games, going to Montpellier and competing well, then doing the same here. Toulon most recently, up against a big, big pack, we did it right. That gives me confidence.

“There certainly won’t be any fear of going over there. We know we need to win to keep our Championship hopes alive. So there won’t be any shortage of intensity.”

The match at the Stade de France will be a battle of wits as well as a physical confrontation, and McInally accepted that the Scotland squad have a lot of work to do over the next fortnight after being unable to play at their most inventive against the Irish, particularly in the second half.

“A huge amount of effort went into the game, but we were too inaccurate in attack and Ireland defended really well.

“We were hammering their line just before half time – that was key, the fact we didn’t get anything. I felt if we could have gone into half time in a lead, we would have been in a better position.

“I was still very confident we could win if we executed our game plan in the second half, but errors crept in and we never got firing in attack, which is usually very reliable. We need to look at that before Paris in a couple of weeks.

“We weren’t good enough in the second half to beat the second-best team in the world. They took their chances and defended really well.

“We probably defended a bit more than we would have liked. We like to attack, but when we got into attack we weren’t accurate. So we were masters of our own downfall there, but give credit to Ireland, they defend so well.

‘I go back to that spell [just before] half-time. We were throwing everything at them; they held on.

“There is huge frustration among the players. The game plan was the right one. We just didn’t execute it at times. The players are hugely frustrated with the mistakes.”