{"id":396298,"date":"2026-01-29T05:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396298\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T05:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:22:12","slug":"the-grand-slam-game-is-round-two-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396298\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Grand Slam game is round two now’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This year\u2019s Calcutta Cup clash at Murrayfield in round two of the Guinness Six Nations<\/a> has been labelled the \u201cGrand Slam game\u201d by Andy Goode.<\/p>\n

Scotland<\/a> and England<\/a> meet in Edinburgh<\/a> on February 14 after opening round fixtures against Italy<\/a> in Rome for the Scots and Wales<\/a> at Twickenham\u2019s Allianz Stadium for Steve Borthwick\u2019s side, and Goode feels this could be Scotland\u2019s year should they get the job done against their nemesis. Conversely, England will be in a prime position for the Slam should they overcome their \u201cbig test\u201d.<\/p>\n

While many originally predicted the round five meeting between France<\/a> and England at the Stade de France to be the Grand Slam decider, with both sides expected to arrive in Paris unbeaten, a combination of France\u2019s squad selection, Scotland\u2019s starting XV and England\u2019s poor record in recent years against Gregor Townsend\u2019s side have led Goode to make this prediction on The Rugby Pod <\/a>recently.<\/p>\n

This came after fellow host Dan Biggar<\/a> asserted that \u201cEngland will fancy that [France] are not as unbeatable in Paris as with those players in,\u201d following Fabien Galthie\u2019s decision to omit record try-scorer Damian Penaud<\/a> and former captains Gregory Alldritt<\/a> and Gael Fickou<\/a> from his squad. This statement was made before Uini Atonio\u2019s sudden retirement<\/a>, which only reinforces Biggar\u2019s point.<\/p>\n

Neither Biggar nor Jim Hamilton<\/a> agreed with Goode, suggesting Scotland\u2019s bench and second-half performances in recent matches are the factors that will cost them in the Championship.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Scotland <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

England <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But with both England and France at home this year, this could be Scotland\u2019s best chance of securing their first-ever Six Nations title.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Grand Slam game is round two now,\u201d Goode said. \u201cRound two is Grand Slam territory, which is Scotland against England up in Murrayfield.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cScotland are 100 per cent, looking at the fixtures and how they pan out, this could be [Scotland\u2019s] year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look at [England\u2019s] games, we play Wales at home, that\u2019s a given first-up, that\u2019ll be 50 points, but the hard game, you can\u2019t get away from it, going up to Scotland. I think last year was the first year we won the Calcutta Cup in five or six years, so the reality of it is, Scotland always are our bogey team. We can dust up Ireland<\/a> in round three at Twickenham with the state of what Ireland are producing at the minute \u2013 you\u2019d expect England to be favourites there.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our big game is Scotland in round two, and that sets us up as to whether we\u2019re going for a Grand Slam, or we\u2019re not. I know that\u2019s a fairly obvious statement but, I\u2019m telling you now, England have the ability to win a Grand Slam, but build into the competition and, ultimately, our big test is round two against Scotland. That\u2019s a game that\u2019s always been difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year\u2019s Calcutta Cup clash at Murrayfield in round two of the Guinness Six Nations has been labelled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-396298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}