YOU would think that any professional team worth their salt prepare to be adaptable. Whether it’s training sessions on what to do if they go a man down, or little exercises to take them out of their routine, they all learn to be responsive to events, don’t they?

It makes sense after all. No Plan A is ever put into practice in its entirety, so players need alternatives. You cannot make training so regimented that they all get bored stiff, and you cannot have your build-up to a big match become so regimented that the slightest change to the schedule throws everyone into a tizzy.

Cannot, or at least should not. And yet, since Ireland lost 27-22 to Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday, there has been a lot of noise from them about the disruption caused by a 15-minute delay to their arrival at the ground.

Not that they are trying to use that as an excuse. Oh no, of course not. It’s just that, for something that supposedly had no effect on the outcome of the match, they keep talking about it.

Joe Schmidt was the first, immediately after the game. “We arrived 15 minutes late to the stadium and were late for most things in the first half,” the head coach said. “We were sluggish and missed a few tackles.

“We left the hotel on time: these things happen. It’s certainly not an excuse.”

Not an excuse, only it was one of the first things he said.

Then there was the manager, Paul Dean, who was quoted in an Irish Independent article with the headline ‘Confirmed: Scottish police re-routed Irish bus on way to Murrayfield’. “We left the hotel on time and were delayed getting to the ground but it didn’t have any affect on performance,” Dean said. “We took a different route, enforced by the police. The circumstances were out of our control but we don’t feel it contributed to the performance on the day.”

And centre Robbie Henshaw addressed the topic in the same article. “It certainly wasn’t the norm,” he said. “When we first got to the dressing room, we had 25 minutes to the warm-up. Usually it is 45 minutes in the Aviva. That would have been a change for some of the lads. It was a change in set-up.

“We’re not making excuses. We knew what was going to come at us. There are no excuses for the slow start.”

No excuses, but the message seems to be ‘Let’s keep banging on about something irrelevant to distract people from our disappointing performance.’

This bus fuss is no big deal in itself, other than to be slightly embarrassing to those Irish players and supporters more inclined to face up to the real reasons why they lost. But it is just the latest example this season of Irish sniping at Scottish sides.

There was a time when this fixture was the friendliest on the calendar, when no-one supposedly cared who won or lost as long as we all enjoyed ourselves. That was back in the 1980s and ‘90s when Scotland generally had the beating of Ireland, and it certainly feels like a distant era when you compare it to the bad blood that now appears to exist.

First there was Keith Earls of Munster, moaning about Glasgow’s Fraser Brown after being sent off in the Champions Cup match between the teams back in October. Then, in the aftermath of the same teams’ meeting at Scotstoun last month, we had the long-running saga of Conor Murray’s standing leg, and how the scrum-half was supposedly targeted by Warriors players every time he attempted a clearance kick.

Former players have joined in too. Before Saturday’s match, Ronan O’Gara - now a coach with Racing 92, who have lost to Glasgow twice this season although I’m sure that has nothing whatsoever to do with his attitude - said: “I hope Ireland hammer Scotland today. Too mouthy - they can’t back it up.”

Too mouthy? Scotland? Whatever the failings our present crop of players may have, the notion that they talk themselves up too much is absurd. Yes, they are growing in confidence as a result of their improvement, but they remain meticulously modest in their public pronouncements.

And after the match ex-international Neil Francis wrote an opinion piece headlined “Losing to an inferior side will really hurt Joe Schmidt and Ireland”. Scotland, according to the former Test forward, “were offside all day”. Ireland had an “obvious superiority” over opponents who were “a reasonably good Scottish side but still a Scottish side and Ireland have beaten them in their sleep over the last 17 years”.

Maybe that complacent attitude is the key to all the carping. Maybe Ireland have become so accustomed to defeating Scotland that they have allowed the odd touch of arrogance to creep in. They should get back on track against Italy at the weekend, but if the wheels fall off the bus again - metaphorically speaking, of course - let’s hope they relearn the self-criticism and good grace that, like the ability to adapt to changed circumstances, should be second nature to them.