Sean Maitland says Scotland style of play will not change

Sean Maitland insists Scotland will not change their free-flowing style of rugby despite further self-inflicted mistakes costing them in their defeat to Ireland on Saturday.

Ireland's 28-8 victory at the Aviva Stadium, coupled with England's 22-16 defeat in France, ensured Joe Schmidt's side claimed the Six Nations title with a week to spare.

Scotland spurned three excellent scoring opportunities during the game, with Huw Jones, Stuart Hogg and Peter Horne all failing to capitalise on well-worked moves, while Horne gifted Jacob Stockdale the opening score with a wayward pass.

We're working hard every week and it's just the small things we need to fix. Hopefully we can sort that out come Italy

But wing Maitland says they will continue to throw the ball around, even if they do not always manage to execute their plans.

"This is how we want to play," said Maitland. "Horney will be gutted. We did talk about their winger who loves to come up looking for those intercepts but we want to chuck the ball about amongst ourselves and have fun.

"Obviously that try was early in the game and after that we had a pretty obvious opportunity when Huw broke through and things could have been a lot different.

"Are the mistakes we made easily fixed? Yeah, big time. Obviously it sucks to lose but if we're judging ourselves on the Wales game, the effort wasn't there, we didn't work hard, we didn't play for each other.

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"This time we might have lost by 20 but the effort was there, the energy too. It's just a few little tweaks we need to fix."

Defeat to Wales on the opening weekend of the competition was followed by impressive wins over France and then England in the Calcutta Cup clash.

Scotland have not won three consecutive matches in the Six Nations for 22 years but Harlequins wing Maitland remains upbeat about their future prospects.

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"We're not that far [from competing for titles]," he added. "The Six Nations is obviously a really tough competition and it never gets any easier - especially playing three away games against quality teams.

"But we're not far away. We're working hard every week and it's just the small things we need to fix. Hopefully we can sort that out come Italy [on March 17]."