Stuart Hogg is adamant Scotland must learn quickly from their mistakes.
The Scotland captain is frustrated by his team’s slow start to the Guinness Six Nations, saying that it is time to cut out the errors that have cost them so far.
Scotland have lost by seven points in Ireland and then at home to England, and will now try to put things right away in Italy in Round 3.
“We need to get our stuff spot on,” said Hogg.
“We are constantly learning, but we need to learn quickly. We can’t be sitting here in a couple of years’ time saying exactly the same things. We’ve said that for a while now.
“The exciting thing is we can get better. The boys are working hard to create opportunities. We do expect to win everything – but the reality is we can’t win everything.”
Hogg has been in the spotlight for a couple of individual errors in the campaign, notably dropping the ball over the line in Ireland.
But he insists his focus is on the positives from the first two games as he looks to put any mistakes behind him.
“I will be doing my normal performance, going out to express myself and have some fun,” said Hogg.
“But everybody concentrates on the negatives nowadays, rather than the positives that happened in the game.
“I believe I’ve done a lot of good stuff in the past couple of weeks as well. But everybody concentrates on the not-so-good moments.
“I’m a confident player. I believe in my ability. I know that, on my day, I can play some good rugby. I’m looking forward to doing that on Saturday.”
Head coach Gregor Townsend has made three changes ahead of the match against Italy in the hopes of securing his first win of this year’s Guinness Six Nations.
Townsend promoted Edinburgh forwards Stuart McInally and Ben Toolis to the first team alongside Gloucester’s Chris Harris.
Toolis replaces the injured Jonny Gray, while Harris and McInally were chosen ahead of Huw Jones and Fraser Brown respectively.
The Azzurri currently prop up the table and are also winless so far.
But while Scotland fans will expect to see their team’s first win, Townsend is wary of the threats posed by Italy.
“Italy are always a very tough opponent, especially in Rome, where we know they’ll look to play with a huge amount of energy,” he said.
“It’s a different Italy team to the one we’ve played in the past. In their opening two games of the championship they have played with real ambition and width.”
