Jones’ England hold off spirited Scotland to retain Calcutta Cup

Former Calcutta Cup-winning captain Andy Nicol believes there is “absolutely no reason” why Scotland can not triumph in tomorrow’s mouthwatering Six Nations opener against England.

Yes, it was a bruising, physical encounter, with England’s set-piece showing up well, especially in the second half, and referee John Lacey is known for his leniency at the breakdown, which understandably led to a narrowing of the game, but still this was not anything near a top-quality Test match. “We’re lucky”, said Jones, who revealed that England trained in Hyde Park last Saturday. Scotland are going to be massively up for it, as are we, so if you throw all that into the mix, it’s a massive game for us.

“I thought he was outstanding with his carrying and defence work”.

Led by new skipper Dylan Hartley, England lacked fluidity at times and conceded 12 penalties across the 80 minutes, including eight in the first half.

It is hard to read too much into England’s Calcutta Cup victory and far too early to draw any conclusions about how the team will fare under Eddie Jones.

Scotland’s head coach, Vern Cotter, is aiming to maintain the momentum of his squad’s impressive World Cup campaign. It became a set-piece defensive games and out second half performance was admirable. “We stuck at it and when it mattered we got some dividends”.

The Jones era was launched with a 15-9 victory over Scotland at Murrayfield that has given the new regime breathing space ahead of the next assignment against an Azzurri team narrowly beaten by France on Saturday. “It was an easy win”. “He attacks well off the nine and we’re trying to get him to do more wider, but he’s still young at 22”.

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Scotland suffered a whitewash in last year’s Six Nations but came within a controversial refereeing decision of making the last four in the World Cup, losing their Twickenham quarter-final against Australia 35-34 after Bernard Foley’s late penalty kick for the Wallabies. But, having had just two weeks with his players, Jones had evidently been unable to iron out all the creases in their play as a couple of times they let a promising start break down with basic handling errors.

“We are not playing history, we are playing England”.

England’s scrum – a platform Jones was looking to build from – was a mixed bag and Kruis’ try came from one of the few early ones that held up well. They’ve certainly said in the press that’s what they want to do.

The two teams threw the ball around in the opening exchanges thanks to the dry weather, but when expansive play yielded no results after 10 minutes, George Ford stepped into the pocket to attempt a drop goal. We have sorted things out that needed to be done.

“We can’t dwell on this too much”. I think he’ll try to surprise us with something we haven’t seen somewhere along the line. The Scottish pack put Vunipola under pressure at the back, and though he managed to make some ground at the tackle the Scottish forwards did enough to disrupt proceedings at the ruck.

“Some things were said about us after the World Cup which were not true, so we wanted to show what we can do”.