Malcolm urges Scotland to rebuild winning habit after winless WXV campaign

Scotland captain Rachel Malcolm has urged her squad to make winning a habit again after a difficult run of results that saw them lose all three WXV Global Series matches against Australia, Canada and New Zealand’s Black Ferns — leaving them with just one Test victory in 2026.

That solitary win came in their Guinness Women’s Six Nations opener against Wales, a stark contrast to the form that carried Scotland to the quarter-finals of the Women’s Rugby World Cup little more than a year ago.

“Ultimately, we want to win Test matches,” Malcolm told RugbyPass. “We don’t want to go back to Scotland having lost multiple games on the road, which at the minute we are. I think for me, that’s the biggest thing going into the Six Nations: learning how to win again and making that a habit.”

Despite the disappointing scorelines, the 35-year-old identified genuine progress across the WXV campaign, pointing to the gap between Scotland’s opening performance against Canada and their final outing against Australia as evidence the squad is moving in the right direction.

“If I look at our performance in the first game against Canada and compare that to the final game against Australia, there was actually so much more improvement than you maybe think,” she said. “So I think we can take a lot of hope from that.”

Malcolm also stressed the challenge of integrating a largely inexperienced group, describing her leadership role as one of “honing” the winning mentality within a new generation of players.

Off the field, Scottish Rugby has moved to provide stability by confirming Dave Butcher as head coach on a full-time basis after an initial interim appointment, with Chris Laidlaw also joining the coaching staff permanently following a secondment from Harlequins. The pair’s arrival brings continuity after the disruption caused by Sione Fukofuka’s departure after just eight months in charge.

Malcolm drew on her own early career — when Scotland rarely won at all — to frame the current moment as one of relative strength rather than crisis. “There was a time at the start of my career where none of us had ever won for Scotland,” she said. “It doesn’t feel the same because I think we have people in that group who have won a huge amount of games for Scotland and achieved some really brilliant things. The fact that we’ve got those people and that experience means they’ll pull the rest of us through.”