Numbers don’t always tell the whole story, but just in case Scotland ladies, the biggest numbers jumping out at you pretty much sum up what a disappointing 2026 was.
Let’s go to Guinness Women’s Six Nations in April they were sixth in the world ranking. However, now at the end of October, they are 10.
Things got off to a relatively bright start this year with a win Wales in Cardiff, but that was followed by four losses in the Six Nations and then five losses from five in the WXV Global Series.
The nine-game losing streak is the worst since the team lost 12 straight in 2022 and 2023.
Including Wales’ win, 521 points have been conceded in 10 games this year.
As a result, 2026 was a year that certainly raised more questions than answers when it came to Scotland.
Scotland – and a country with its resources – will always find it difficult to compete with the world’s top four sides England, New Zealand, Canada and France.
However, there’s no reason why they can’t compete to be ‘best of the rest’, and indeed they reached a record fifth place in the rankings at the end of 2024, but that now seems a long way off.
When he arrived as the new head coach in December, Sione Fukofuka said: “It’s the next step that we really want to push and accelerate towards”.
Unfortunately, the next step was to go back once and build a four-year cycle according to Women Rugby World Cup 2029 in Australia it must now be regarded mostly as a triennial.
During the Six Nations, losses to England and France they were hard to handle and the injured team was exhausted by the time they were well beaten Ireland in Dublin in the fifth round.
That may have been the mode of defeat Italy that hurt the most as the visitors were blown away in the first half and trailed 29-0 in Parma, before losing 41-14 to a team they normally go back-to-back with.
The team finished fifth in the Six Nations, leading captain Rachel Malcolm to believe Scotland had lost their team identity between a place in the last 16 of the 2025 World Cup and that point.
It’s clear things didn’t sit well between head coach Fukofuka and the players and he stepped down from his role in August for family and personal reasons.
Around the same time, senior assistant coach Ioan Cunningham, who like Fukofuka had only been in the position for a few months, left to seek new opportunities.
Fukofuka was then appointed head coach of the Australians just eight days after leaving the same role with Scotland and, for whatever reason, it left a bad taste in the mouths of many Scotland fans and those in Scottish rugby.
However, nothing stands still in sports and Dave Butcher, who was an assistant to Fukofuka, became the interim head coach a short time ago WXV Global Series the action got going and quickly put in place a group of assistants in the form of Chris Laidlaw, Tom Luke and Robbie Ferguson.
Home WXV is losing to two of the best teams in the world in the form of Canada and New Zealand they were expected, but there was hope that a win or two could come in the next three matches against Australia.
In the home match against the Wallaroos, Scotland led 10-5 at half-time but lost 30-10, while they lost the first leg away 56-12.
They battled back in the second game on the road and trailed 17-14 at halftime, but were left wondering what might have been after a 38-31 upset capped a difficult September and October.
Butcher has seen a number of green shoots and positive effects since taking over, and to be fair, there have been, but there is a lot of work to do.
The positives include the way some young and new players played.
22-year-old scrumhalf Aicha Sutcliffe, 21-year-old lock Holland Bogan and 22-year-old scrum-half Ceitidh Ainsworth have really stepped up to the plate since making their debuts this year.
Wing Katie Buchanan is another who has made good use of her chance, while at the other end of the experience scale, back-row Evie Gallagher has set the standard and is sure to put her hat in the ring for next year’s British and Irish Lions call-up.
What captain Malcolm and her team-mates crave now is consistency within the coaching set-up to give them the opportunity to really try and push on from 2027 onwards and get the team back to the levels they know they can achieve.
Butcher seems to want to take the job permanently if offered, and right now it would seem like the best option after a year off.
After the WXV Global Series, Scotland’s players will return to their clubs and with larger numbers now with Edinburgh Rugby and Glasgow Warriors having been persuaded by the governing body to move north from England, it will be interesting to see how he does Celtic Challenge the campaign is going.
It starts in December and hopefully the international players will raise the standards on both sides and accelerate the progress of the best exciting, young talent coming through playing alongside them.
With the next international not until April 10, when Ireland visit Murrayfield, what happens off the pitch between then and now will be fascinating.
It’s safe to say there’s certainly plenty to think about for Scottish Rugby performance director David Nuciforo, women’s general manager Gemma Fay, head of women’s performance and pathways Andy Rhys Jones and others.