Gregor Townsend claims it would have been a 'massive shock' for his Scotland team to beat Ireland at Murrayfield on Sunday. The Scots' hopes of winning a first ever Six Nations title - and a first championship since 1999 - were dealt a potentially mortal blow by Ireland's 32-18 victory. It was the home side's 11th consecutive defeat to their Celtic rivals going back to 2017 and, after the event, Scotland's head coach underlined the gap that exists between the sides. “We’ve lost to the number two team in the world who are going for the third title,” Townsend said. “If you take it like that, you go ‘well, it would have been a shock’ if we had won. "I think it would have been a massive shock. They were clear favourites but we believed we could win and we worked hard towards a win. “Playing our next opponent (England) was always going to be difficult. We don’t have a brilliant record down there, it’s a very tough place to play but we do have a very good record recently. They’ve just come off the back of winning a great game against France. “We know how difficult each game in the Six Nations is. We’ve got to obviously play much better next time to have a chance of bouncing back with a victory.” Dismissing a query if this latest defeat put Scotland back at square one, Townsend said that Ireland's comfortable 2023 World Cup pool win over the Scots forced him into a change in approach. “The scoreline was big, and I know it’s you guys’ (journalists) job to talk about this game but we have to look a bit longer term and where we’ve been," he said. “After that game against Ireland in the World Cup we changed a lot, who we select, who we are as a team, and that was done with the players as well. Our next game, we played a different type of rugby against Wales. “We’ve carried on that, we’ve added bits to it and we’ve been really competitive since then. This was probably our most disappointing performance, defeat let’s say, since Ireland, but it happens every now and again. If it was to happen in the next two or three games I’d be much more concerned. “It’s a one-off game and you’ve got to have context. We’re playing a tournament where you’ve got to play five games and if you start to over-analyse what went on in the one game, you lose sight of what you’ve been building towards. "I said before the game that the defeats we’ve had against Ireland have shaped who we are as well. It’s changed a little bit how we played and that’s been transferred to other performances. It didn’t transfer well enough this time but you’ve got to take the learnings out of your game. “No-one’s more disappointed than me that we weren’t able to go two from two and we weren’t able to beat Ireland. But they deserved to win and we’ve got to make sure that this game, and all the last four or five that we’ve played, are part of who we are next time we play.” The Irish Mirror has a rugby WhatsApp group where you can get breaking news and top stories on Ireland's Six Nations campaign straight to your phone. Click here to join. You can leave our group at any time if you don't like it.