Any gloom from these parts genuinely was not an attempt to reverse jinx England; I wasn’t talking down Scotland and talking up England because secretly I knew this was going to happen and just didn’t want to tempt fate. I genuinely thought England’s run of form was decent and they’d started to pull together the strings of their team into a little tighter knot and were looking good. Their results in the autumn were a lot better than Scotland’s; our looked like they were unraveling.
So I’m a little at a loss to explain it, but here goes.
Gone was the rain from last week’s devastatingly poor performance against Italy; the sun wasn’t exactly shining but the ball was dry, the crowd were in full voice and Scotland, as is often the case, showed Scottish Gas Murrayfield what they were all about when England come to town.
This was a very well managed game for the most part. England didn’t get into the Scotland 22 until 17 minutes and Scotland’s defense was up to the task. Lee Radford’s new defensive system seems to be based around two men available for smashing everything that moves and it worked very well.
When Scotland increased the pace of the game they were almost impossible to live with. A prime example of this was just after seven minutes when Kyle Steyn managed a half-break then an offload that set Dempsey and White loose and the crowd roaring, but also directly resulted in Henry Arundell’s (perhaps harsh?) yellow card for slowing the ball down. This would then mean the England winger was shown a red card for a second yellow offence later in the game (more clear cut).
Scotland’s first try came almost directly off the back of that yellow card. A line out from the penalty and a ruck five metres out on the right far wing saw Huw Jones heavily involved, then several phases through the middle (again Jones carrying at least once) before popping up on the left wing to receive Finn Russell‘s punch/tip/pat pass to score a well-earned try.
The second came just minutes later: Russell made a lovely half break enough to put the industrious Jamie Dobie and Steyn into space. The ball came back to the other wing via skipper Sione Tuipulotu who threw a wide pass to Jamie Ritchie who scampered in.
When Finn Russell goes well Scotland goes well, so goes the phrase, and Saturday afternoon was a particularly fine example of that during an opening half hour that Gregor Townsend thought was the best rugby his team had played during 100 games in charge. Finn Russell was at the heart of it.
There was a hint of an interception on penalty advantage about three minutes in but from there it was smooth sailing. Probably his finest moment was when he switched the direction of play, skinned the England tighthead Joe Heyes, then as he was being tackled still managed to put a little chip in behind Ellis Genge who was unable to gather it. Ben White however, was, and dotted down for the try.
Finn rarely gets to be Finn for a full 80 minutes but there were no crazy passes that spring to mind, no disappearing up blind alleys forcing the game. To be fair he didn’t have to, as he got an armchair right from his pack all afternoon and the placement of his kicking was excellent throughout. One of his finer days, and there have been more than a few of those against England.
As France showed against both Wales and Ireland, when a team who have the confidence and the ability can get offloads going they are almost impossible to stop perhaps by anyone apart from a fun-sponge team (like South Africa or a decent Ireland side) who would smother the life and fun out of the game. Scotland should definitely be looking to this as their blueprint going forward, as they currently have so many players who are suited to fast counter-attacking rugby (see also: Glasgow Warriors).
Toony’s high tempo rugby may not work against South Africa or Ireland, and may be nullified by France’ own perfection of the art. But it sure as hell works against England.
England Dominate the Scrum
England grew back into the game mostly powered by scrum dominance. Ellis Genge and Zander Fagerson were having a ding dong battle all day, Genge coming out the better for most of it. In a very bright day for Scotland it was a fairly dark corner given how often the bully teams of this world (yeah, you know we were talking about) tend to use scrum penalties as a technique for milking penalties to move their team down the field.
England’s first try came off the back of scrum dominance. It felt more like a test match at that point of the sort Scotland usually end up losing, and with another hour still to play, you’d be forgiven for expecting that to have been the outcome. Perhaps luckily for Scotland at this point England to do not seem to have aspirations towards offloading rugby and the scramble defence kept them at bay.
At one point Fagerson and loosehead Nathan Macbeth were both on a yellow card warning for scrum infringements, although the card didn’t quite materialize when the next scrum penalty happened to be against England. Once the 20 minute red card was over and England had a full XV they didn’t ever give up.
The other set pieces were much better too. The lineout was improved from last week with the ball dry enough to hold on to. Gregor Brown combined well with Scott Cummings and some other aspects like restarts and maul defence also went well. A prime example saw England battering on the door just before half-time and Scotland successfully defending a rolling maul on their own line; this was one of probably the finest outings by a Scotland pack in recent years.
King Kyle the Magnificent
It doesn’t always happen in Scottish rugby, but every so often a player there is a clamor for a player to start ahead of an underperforming incumbent (usually from Glasgow fans), and he doesn’t always fulfill that expectation. Kyle Steyn has had a couple of good outings for Scotland but in this Calcutta Cup fixture he really grabbed things by the scruff of the neck. So much so that you can’t see him not started all the remaining games of the tournament.
Scotland have always struggled under the high ball even when Blair Kinghorn is having a “good” day, and before his move to Toulouse things were pretty much awful. Steyn’s ability in this area coupled with Russell and White’s kicking can make the aerial game a real battle, one that England probably were expecting to win.
Steyn also made good breaks with the ball, tackles plenty and shows the relentless aggressive physicality of a Duhan, but with a little bit more subtlety in his play ball in hand.
He’s a pretty complete rugby player.
On the other wing Dobie is also good under the high ball, but still occasionally shows signs that he has not been playing wing for very long, such as a slightly missed chip kick while on the charge just before halftime, that was caught by the defender; however it came to nothing for England.
That England took 71 minutes to try a low grubber in behind Scotland’s wings when Italy had scored two tries off it inside 12 minutes is a testament possibly to Italy but certainly not to England’s tactical research or even Scotland’s defense.
Scotland’s player of the match after Steyn was probably Jones, who had an absolutely huge first half with his try and was as prevalent in attack and defence as he had been AWOL last week. When Matt Fagerson (on for Ritchie) charged down George Ford’s drop goal attempt just as England were truly back in the contest, he was able to regather. Setting off up the pitch he took Ford in his wake, then popped it across to Jones. The added pace that Jones seems to have acquired since his surgery made the interception try a foregone conclusion as soon as he got the ball, even well inside his own half. Bonus point in the bank.
Sione Talks and Plays a Good Game
A word also for skipper Sione, who had a very robust game carrying the ball, often taking it upon himself to redirect play back into the thick of the action to give more of space to the creative types such as Russell and Jones.
When England’s momentum was building in the second half and worrying memories of Argentina in the autumn were starting to surface in the minds of Scotland fans, Tuipulotu put in a couple of huge hits on England ball carriers that kept the crowd onside, kept the momentum from swinging badly away.
He also managed the referee very well, quietly asserting in his ear – whilst helpfully offering to march his players back so there wasn’t any of those nasty handbags – that “you can’t take the man out in the air”, guv, which of course led to the TMO review, which of course led to Arundell’s second yellow. This one was probably more deserved than the first one, however knowing that he was already on one, he shouldn’t really have attempted it.
Luck of the …. Scottish?
One other thing that has to be mentioned is the luck. They say that good teams create their own luck, but we’ve all seen Scotland teams play reasonably well, be in with a chance of winning and then just when they need a ball not to be knocked on – it gets knocked on.
I would say that’s probably how England felt after the game.
Scotland had possibly the rub of the referee (everywhere apart from the scrum), England gave twenty 20 turnovers away; it seemed like every loose ball went Scotland’s way. Scotland got the rub of the green so hard there would be grass stains.
Injured players will be missed in Cardiff
Jack Dempsey was one of the few who came out of the game in Rome with any credit. He had another excellent outing but was replaced after around an hour with a bicep injury.
Jamie Ritchie was brought in possibly for the sole purpose of winding England up as, like Finn, he tends to raise his game against them. Ritchie also left the game with an injury to his knee, sitting the final minutes of the first half out receiving treatment on the pitch and letting England have parity of numbers – not that it did them much good.
Jamie Dobie injured his shoulder and should be easily replaced given that neither of Scotland’s previous “first choice” wingers have really featured yet. Darcy Graham would probably be the next one to come in, although Duhan normally plays 11 so don’t be surprised to see him either. Blair Kinghorn is another option having played for Toulose at the weekend.
In the back row there are also plenty of replacements waiting to fill in for Ritchie and Dempsey. Most likely will be Matt Fagerson and Josh Bayliss or Andy Oyeama-Christie but Bradbury or one of the younger Edinburgh lads is also possible. Gregor Brown made an excellent pairing with Scott Cummings and given how that went, it seems unlikely that Townsend will want to change it but there’s a possibility he brings in say Max Williamson or Alex Craig (no point in going backwards now Toony) to fill a gap in the second row and moves Gregor Brown to six where he is also adept.
It’s official, we’re a meme
It should also be born in mind that how miserable expectations were and how well they performed, this was essentially the confirmation of Scotland as a meme on various social networks.
It’s easy to generate this meme: the top half is Mel Gibson and a bunch of hairy, steely warriors with blue faces from Braveheart reading “Scotland against England”, and the bottom half is anybody parodying Braveheart (Simpsons, French and Saunders, toddlers)reading “Scotland against anyone else”.
Unfortunately only next week will tell us whether that’s actually going to change any time soon, or whether Scotland have now become a parody of themselves.
The bonus point win they did get could be potentially very important in light of the 2026 Six Nations league table, but only the performance next week is going to tell us whether said league table is going to have any relevance to our lives in the coming weeks, or whether it’s a slide back to the basement for Scotland.