{"id":419658,"date":"2026-02-11T09:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T09:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419658\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T09:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T09:43:10","slug":"six-nations-2026-englands-maro-itoje-returns-to-starting-xv-for-scotland-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419658\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations 2026: England’s Maro Itoje returns to starting XV for Scotland game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Captain Maro Itoje returns to the England starting XV for Saturday’s Six Nations match against Scotland in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

Itoje, who was on the bench for the 48-7 win against Wales,<\/a> starts in the second row as one of two changes to the forward pack.<\/p>\n

Luke Cowan-Dickie is at hooker with Jamie George, who led the side in Itoje’s absence last weekend, among the replacements.<\/p>\n

In the one other change to England’s matchday squad from their opening win, fly-half Fin Smith comes on to the bench in place of namesake Marcus.<\/p>\n

After four straight defeats from 2021 to 2024, England regained the Calcutta Cup with a narrow 16-15 victory last year in London.<\/p>\n

“Scotland are a top-quality side,” head coach Steve Borthwick told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

“I spoke to our players involved in the summer’s Lions tour about Scotland’s players and coaches who were on that tour and our players thought incredibly highly of them. They are so talented.<\/p>\n

“You look at that backline – it almost a Lions backline from that tour, with Finn Russell, Sione Tuipulotu, Huw Jones, Darcy Graham, Blair Kinghorn and Duhan van der Merwe. That is an incredible backline and the way they move that ball is so dangerous. <\/p>\n

“Are they going to play that way? Are they going to go to a kicking game like they did against Italy, which you could understand in that weather? If they bring that phase game, our defence has to be perfect.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Captain Maro Itoje returns to the England starting XV for Saturday’s Six Nations match against Scotland in Edinburgh.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-419658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419658","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=419658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}