Aitken (right) was captain of a successful Scotland side

The man who last captained Scotland to victory at Twickenham, Jim Aitken, has described the state of rugby in his homeland as a shambles.

The Scots have not beaten England there since 1983 and go into Sunday's game on the back of three Six Nations defeats.

Aitken blamed the likes of former team coaches Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer.

"It is an absolute mess and this is a legacy of the McGeechans and the Telfers who thought they were the only guys who knew anything about rugby."

Aitken, now a successful businessman, believes that Scotland has made the mistake of concentrating on their professional sides - presently there are two, Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors - at the expense of the national league.

"The grassroots have been neglected," he told BBC Radio Scotland's Sport Nation programme.

"People thought that they could make do with one or two professional sides and just pick who they thought could be able to fit into these sides and make a better Scottish side.

"They neglected this potential talent that comes through the old system from clubs to districts and to the Scottish team.

We have got to get right back to basics and try to re-establish the game in Scotland Former Scotland captain Jim Aitken

"It is not going to work like that again, but there must be a whole raft of potential players that are being overlooked and missed out on."

Aitken does not claim to know all the answers himself.

"There is no instant solution," he said. "We have gone far too far down this road now. It is going to take a long, long time.

"The first step is to recognise the mess we are in and, until we do that, we are nowhere - and there are a lot of people who don't recognise it.

"It is the attitude. They have managed to develop a them and us attitude, whereby the international set-up is completely detached from the grassroots set-up.

"We have got to get back to realising that everyone's in this together."

Aitken suggested that rugby had to sell itself again to the public and was critical of the Scottish Rugby Union.

"We have got to get right back to basics and try to re-establish the game in Scotland," he added. "Not just the international level, which has now become so detached from the reality of the game in Scotland, that it is not doing us any good whatsoever.

"I think we have gone too far down this professional game to go back to the way it was, but somebody has got to come in with some bright ideas as to how we can make this right.

"I just don't see where that is going to come from right now. I don't see the leaders.

"It does make me sad to see the way the game's gone. There's too many vested interests there and too many people with agendas that got into this game and started to run it.

"It is going to need a complete clean-out and I have said that for 15 years now.

"They are certainly not rugby men and there's too many people in it for what they get out of it in monetary terms other than what they are putting into the game."

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