by The death rumble in the Murrayfield tunnel, when Ryan Wilson tried to rattle George Ford’s cage, has been held up as a sticking point for good reason. Eleven months earlier, Scotland were humbled 61-21 at Twickenham.
In the hours after the Wilson-Ford fracas, Gregor Townsend’s side ended a 10-year losing streak against England. And that 25-13 win was just the beginning. Since the start of 2018, Scotland have lost just one of six Calcutta Cup meetings.
England’s respectable win rate of 17 per cent in that period is worse than their results against New Zealand, South Africa, France and Ireland; everyone. Scotland are, statistically, England’s bogey team. And for a long time. This is how Townsend turned the tables.
Finn Russell and collective commitment
Despite missing out on the 2020 encounter, Scotland’s only one, due to his infamous breach of team off-field protocol, Finn Russell is close to a highlight of the next five games. He has only missed 10 minutes, those due to the 2021 yellow card for tripping Ben Youngs.
His impact seemed enormous, which was backed up by the statistics. According to Stats Perform, he has made five line breaks. His closest competitor in this metric is Stuart Hogg, with two.
Mastery moments are easy to remember. There was a 2018 pass to Huw Jones who sailed across the Scotland 22 and lobbed Jonathan Joseph to the bone. A year later, he looked the other way to fox Manu Tuilagi and sent Sam Johnson tearing up the middle of Twickenham. In 2022, he sparked a comeback with three kicks.
The first found Duhan van der Merwe who was behind the English defence. The latter, on the next step towards the other wing, scored a penalty try after being touched by Luke Cowan-Dickie. Minutes later, Russell’s third strike went to five meters. Joe Marler had to throw into the line, as Cowan-Dickie was in the bin. A mix-up resulted in a scrum penalty which brought the winning points.
England pressed Russell last season, but they couldn’t unsettle him for long enough. Russell put Huw Jones clear before Scotland’s first try, after Owen Farrell had beaten him on the line out, and then produced the sweeping counter that proved Van der Merwe’s winner.
Townsend prioritized a “game of speed and movement”, telling Tuesday’s episode of the BBC Rugby Union Weekly podcast that anything else would put Scotland at risk of being “overmatched at some point when you’re playing a team with a huge pack “. It has an ideal string-puller in Russell, but a balanced backline with clarity on individual roles has allowed newer faces to progress immediately. Think Ben White at half-back or Sione Tuipulotu at center. Kyle Steyn impressed on the right wing in 2023, and returns with Blair Kinghorn for Saturday. Russell is the main act, powered by a complementary supporting cast, and also includes the Scottish conviction
Controlling pace and taking chances
John Barclay and Hamish Watson ruled the breakdown in 2018, destroying and destroying with great flair. England conceded 10 attacking rucks in that game; a return that is simply bad. The following year, Darcy Graham joined in with some crafty jackalling. All three wins in this current race in Scotland have been secured by recent changes: Watson in 2021, Graham in 2022 and Jamie Ritchie in 2023.
In 2022 specifically, there was a different kind of disruption. Scotland often stood tall in sets and overcame England’s motivation in that way. Matt Fagerson was a nuisance for the men in white, with Watson and Ritchie ready to pounce if isolated carriers emerged. In many ways, Scotland’s defense has tended to control the tempo of the game while England have had the ball. Then, in attack, they kept the energy high.
Also in 2022, England’s Ben White’s effort took the stairs after they cleared to touch. A quick line-out moved into midfield and Scotland bounced back towards the same touchline, using Russell as bait on the far side of the ruck. Hogg got up at first receiver, conceded to the outside of Maro Itoje and offloaded to the brilliant Graham, who smashed cleanly through. White was on hand to complete an ’11 play’ – the name given to a setup move that moves one step down the field before changing direction – and labeled it a “total team effort”. “It was something the analysts looked at, the coaching implemented and the players executed,” he told the Telegraph’s Rugby Podcast this week. “We talked about taking a line quickly, getting the ball in, keeping it alive and trying to play fast.”
In every Calcutta Cup match except 2020, Scotland have been the more clinical side in the opposition 22. They averaged an impressive 5.4 points per visit in the 2019 shoot-out, with 3.4 points per visit in 2022 and 4.1 in 2023. Those figures are very effective, and England’s lower efforts – including 0.8 points per entry in both 2018 and 2021 – endorse Scotland’s dogged defence.
Set piece solidity and canny kick
Although England have a 9-5 lead in scrum penalties in this six-game series, it hasn’t hurt Scotland too badly. Pierre Schoeman, George Turner and Zander Fagerson form a formidable unit in the front row these days. They caused South Africa’s issues in Marseille last September.
As for the away line, Scotland have not lost a match in the last three Calcutta Cup matches. They have thought creatively to avoid disrupting Itoje, sending the ball over the top into midfield and also feeding the forwards quickly. Although their driving is not as strong, with England registering 105 maul meters to Scotland’s 35 from 2018, according to Stats Perform, they deserve a platform. And at the death in 2023, Scotland’s defense emerged. Jonny and Richie Gray stayed down and shunted into a counter-drive that splintered England, who was looking for a pushover.
For all Scotland’s athleticism, they have kicked for more meters and carried fewer meters than England in each of their last two Calcutta Cup victories. Before that, Ali Price’s chip and chase set up Magnus Bradbury in 2019, and a decisive scrum from Russell, which allowed Sean Maitland to rise above Farrell, won the crucial position of the field before Van der Merwe’s decisive score in 2021.
Scotland really deserves to be seen as the favorite this weekend. Six years on from Wilson’s antics, England are the underdogs who have a point to prove.
