Cusiter believes Scotland can bounce back

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Scotland scrum-half Chris Cusiter insists they can bounce back from their heavy defeat by France by cutting out the simple mistakes.

Scotland scrum-half Chris Cusiter insists they can bounce back from their heavy defeat by France by cutting out the simple mistakes.

The Scots travel to Cardiff to face triumphant Wales six days after opening their Six Nations campaign with a 27-6 home defeat by France.

Wales go into the Millennium Stadium clash as hot favourites after coming from 19-6 down to secure a famous victory in England.

But Cusiter, who replaced Mike Blair in the second half at Murrayfield, believes Scotland will retain confidence going into the game.

“We had a talk among ourselves and with the coaches and we know that the level of performance against France was not acceptable,” the Perpignan number nine said.

“We will look to make a couple of adjustments, do the basics better and come up with a big performance.

“We can't go completely back to the drawing board because of one bad performance.

“It's a short turnaround to be playing on Saturday after Sunday, but we have got to regroup as the tournament is still wide open.

“Yes, we will go into the game as underdogs against a Welsh team on a high after their win over England.

“But I don't think everything went wrong. We have to retain our confidence and show what we are capable of in Wales.

“We just made a few too many mistakes, let them off the hook at times when we needed to keep the pressure on and did not ask enough questions of their new players.”

Cusiter admits Scotland cannot afford to lose after going into the tournament with high hopes.

“We got ourselves in great shape for the World Cup and, following that, we had trained well together and there was a real cohesion about the squad,” The 25-year-old told BBC Sport.

“Our boys have been playing well for the pro teams in Scotland, England, France and elsewhere.

“And we therefore went into the opening game full of confidence and felt we had an ideal chance of making a winning start to the Six Nations campaign against a new-look French team.

“But now we have to go to Wales and win to put our title hopes back on track.”