In public, the instruction will have been for England to be humble, respectful and measured, but on the training field and in the team room over the past week, it should have been very different. Behind closed doors, they should have been talking themselves up and stressing how Scotland simply should not be able to live with them on Saturday.
England have a bit of a mental hurdle to overcome with Scotland, not having won at Murrayfield since 2020 and having lost four of the past five encounters with them overall, before scraping home 16-15 at Twickenham last year. But now they have built up a convincing body of work that should inspire great confidence. They have won 12 Tests on the trot and thrashed Wales last weekend.
This is international sport. You must have that inner belief. The coaches do not want complacency, and they will still keep you on edge, but they want you to believe.
It was something that Warren Gatland brought in with Wales. He changed the mindset completely. In private he endorsed extreme confidence. For instance, in 2018, before the game against Scotland, he told the players: “We’ll batter them.” And they did, winning 34-7. I really liked that.
We would be playing a big game and on the Tuesday, before the team had been announced, he would lay out the shirts from 1 to 15 and say, “Right, starting team for Saturday, off you go and get your shirts.” Everybody would look at each other and be a little unsure what to do, but guess who always moved first. The scrum half Mike Phillips, of course. He’d say, “Come on, lads, who’s starting with me?” He would play up to that reputation, but Gatland loved it.
Before the Super Saturday in 2015, when we needed to beat Italy by a significant margin in the first game of the day, Gatland asked us: “What are you going to do in this game?” Nobody spoke initially. “Come on, what are you going to do?”
Gatland instilled extreme belief in Warburton’s Wales side
GETTY
I put my hand up and said, “I’ll get three turnovers for you, Gats.” Alun Wyn Jones put his hand up and said what he was going to do, and all of a sudden everyone was putting their hands up and saying something that they were going to own. Gatland held us to it and I’m pretty sure we all did what we said we would do in our 61-20 win. It’s not arrogance. He just wanted us to believe in ourselves.
England need to be doing the same now. I’ve been coached by Steve Borthwick and he is one of the best coaches I have had. I’m sure he will be saying those things.
I think he will, though, have been disappointed with the lack of ruthlessness in the second half against Wales. That is the sort of thing that can happen in a club game, but in a big international match you want to keep the foot on the throat and destroy a side. You want to send out a message to the rest of the Six Nations.
Borthwick knows that England, despite the 48-7 dismantling of Wales, must raise their game
DAN MULLAN/THE RFU/GETTY
As an international, you are always aware that the opposition are watching, so the England players will have known that France were in their team hotel watching that performance and England should have been thinking that they wanted to make them panic, make them think that they do not want to play against them. Players really do think like that. I know I did.
Borthwick will be asking his players: “What are our super-strengths?” There were two of them that Wales could not handle last weekend: first, the kicking game, where George Ford kicked long and was always patient; second, their gainline dominance, their carrying ability that, time and time again, Wales could not stop from first phase.
Ford’s territorial kicking and strategic thinking could make the difference at Murrayfield
DAVID ROGERS/GETTY
The numbers from last year’s match against Scotland are interesting — the fly half Fin Smith kicked 241 metres, whereas Ford kicked more than 1,000 metres against Wales. That is why Borthwick is gravitating towards Ford as his preferred No10. He knows how tactically astute Ford is when it comes to that territorial kicking game.
Last year against Scotland, England had 86 carries and only four entries into Scotland’s 22. They just didn’t assert themselves from a carrying perspective. They still managed to sneak the win, but they can be so much better if they get those two things right, just as they did against Wales.
Italy deserved to beat Scotland last weekend. It was one of those games in which the playbook goes out of the window, but I always find it a little weird that when it rains, players panic and ask: “What are we going to do?” We should be used to it. We play in the rain all the time. Yes, the rain in Rome was extreme, but, while Scotland’s lineout capitulated, Italy still managed to do pretty well there. It was not all about the weather.
Scotland have beaten England four times in their past five Six Nations meetings
REX
When conditions are like that, yes, the half backs have to be smart tactically, but the key thing is that the forwards roll up their sleeves and are dominant. Scotland did not necessarily do that, and England will have been watching and will know that they have got an edge in that department. Scotland didn’t front up, and I hope they take that personally, and do turn up at Murrayfield.
I was interested to read Courtney Lawes’s column in The Times about Scotland’s obsession with beating England alone and I totally agree that it can stifle you as a team.
With Wales, it used to annoy me so much when people said that as long as we beat England, it would be a good season. What a defeatist mindset. As Wales captain, I never put England on a pedestal. I always said that if we wanted to win the Six Nations, we had to beat everyone.
So expect Scotland to be fired up. Murrayfield is a special place to play. It always used to remind me of watching the Five Nations and Six Nations as a kid.
As a player, it is one of the best bus rides to a game. You go down this little lane with all the Scots drinking in the pub on the corner, then the bagpipes greet you at the ground and there are fans hanging off the stands as you walk in.
With Wales when we were good, we used to love going up there because, without wishing to sound rude or disrespectful, we used to think: “We can’t wait to shut this lot up in the first ten minutes. Let’s bring some physicality that they can’t live with.”
England must do the same.
Scotland v England
Guinness Six Nations
Murrayfield
Saturday, 4.40pm
TV ITV1
The Ruck Podcast: LiveDon’t miss tough tacklers Courtney Lawes and Serge Betsen on March 9 as they compare notes on France v England and the biggest moments of this year’s Six Nations at Twickenham Stoop. Book tickets here