After suffering a heavy loss at the hands of England on the opening weekend of the competition, Scotland bounced back in style to run in four tries in a 34-10 win over Italy at Murrayfield on February 9.

It was a different game on Sunday with Ireland dominating territory and possession only for the boot of Greig Laidlaw to steer Scotland to victory and maintain their unlikely quest to win a first-ever Six Nations crown and first title since they won the old Five Nations in 1999.

But while Scotland rejoiced in the victory, Brown warned improvements would be needed if Scotland are going to have any chance of upsetting a resurgent Wales team at Murrayfield next month.

“We sat down all week and we thought of a plan and we didn’t really do it out there,” conceded Brown.

“But as a side we are really, really happy to get the win, but we know we need to improve as if we play like that against Wales we will lose that game.

“To be fair to them they put us under a lot of pressure but in saying that some of our defence wasn’t up to standard so we sat down and spoke about that at half time and were keen to get our spacing right.

“The skills weren’t right but having said that the guts and fight we showed was very good.”