Are Scotland suffering from a World Cup hangover?

If last year's Rugby World Cup represented a new high for Scotland women, it seems now we are seeing the comedown.

Reaching the quarter-finals, with superb victories over Wales and Fiji along the way, the Scots achieved everything they set out to do on the biggest stage of all.

With a new coaching team, led by Sione Fukofuka, and the introduction of a host of new players, there was always going to be a period of transition and this Women's Six Nations campaign so far has proved to be a big old dose of reality.

After an encouraging start with victory in Cardiff, an 84-7 walloping at the hands of England and a surprisingly heavy 41-14 defeat in Italy have laid bare the scale of the rebuild.

"We're seeing an element of just what it takes to perform at a World Cup," said Fukofuka.

"There's a number of teams that are now having challenges with player availability posed. The reality is that the players worked really hard in that pre-season, obviously, and performed really well [at the World Cup].

"But then a lot of them went straight back to club rugby. There wasn't a lot of time for them to get that reset back into it. There's also a natural attrition of that cycle, where we knew it was always going to be a bit of a transition coming in at the start of this cycle.

"Probably didn't expect it to be this much of a transition, but what it has afforded us is an opportunity to expose and see some of those younger players who, in the next two to three years, will really feature."

Scotland's cause has not been helped by a long casualty list. Classy centre Emma Orr picked up an injury in the opening win over Wales that ruled her out for the rest of the tournament.

Captain Rachel Malcolm, Rachel McLachlan and Lana Skeldon have suffered the same fate, while experienced midfielder Lisa Thomson is not yet fit for action after recovering from Achilles surgery.

Fukofuka's squad selection for this weekend's match against France speaks to the challenges he is facing in reshaping the squad. The desire to blood new talent coupled with the absence of key players has left a dearth of experience in the squad.

Ten of the matchday 23 have 10 caps or fewer, with the combined total of the eight replacements on the bench just 44 caps. Only six members of the squad have more than 30 Test appearances.

Facing France is a daunting prospect at the best of times. In Scotland's current predicament, it looks like mission impossible.

"This is where we're at," Fukofuka added. "The reality is that we've got a number of players unavailable and we're taking this as an opportunity to expose some of those players.

"There's going to be some tough lessons but they're lessons that if we learn early, we have a four-year cycle to it to develop that learning and develop those players.

"In year three and year four, definitely [for the World Cup] in 2029, those players will then have had Test match experience and there's not many more better teams to face than France to get some of that experience."