Craig Gilroy’s try soon after the break put Ireland in command but back came Scotland who sealed victory thanks to four Greig Laidlaw penalties as indiscipline crept into the visitors’ game.

And Kidney has urged his side to find a cure to their white line fever before their next RBS 6 Nations clash with France, having now lost two matches in a row and suffered a first Championship defeat at Murrayfield since 2011.

“We have to learn how to win out these tight matches because it was six points against England and four here," he said.

“We can knock on the door in these matches, but we have to learn how to finish them off.

“It is a disappointed dressing room, we take it seriously. It is difficult at the moment because we know we went a lot of the way there but just didn't finish it off."

“We created several try-scoring opportunities for ourselves but we didn’t manage to convert enough of them to put us ahead of Scotland’s penalty count.

“We gave away a few penalties and we’ll take a deep look at ourselves about the way we gave some of those away.”

Debutant fly-half Paddy Jackson endured a difficult time of things from the tee, landing just one of his four attempts, but he impressed along side Marshall in the first half in creating chances for Ireland.

And Kidney refused to put his side’s defeat down to a failure to kick their goals.

“I think it’s too easy to put it down to the kickers, we also created a lot of try-scoring opportunities and of we had put those away it would have been different,” he added.

“Obviously their kicking will have a far higher stat than ours and that’s something that we’ll regret but we did do a lot of positives in attack and we managed to open opportunities but we didn’t manage to finish them off.”