HOW ENGLAND PLAN TO BASH THE SCOTS

FOR most of my Wales career we had Shaun Edwards as our defence coach. Shaun brought in a blitz defence when he joined in 2008 and it was a key part of our success in the Six Nations for a long period of time. When it works well, a blitz defence is a game-changer. In simple terms, it involves your defensive line flying up as quickly as possible to put pressure on the opposition ball carrier (above). The aim is to shut down their time and space on the ball and force mistakes.

It is the opposite to a drift defence where you stand off a bit more and try and push the opposition to pass the ball down the line and eventually force them into touch. The keys to a successful blitz defence are speed (for which you have to be incredibly physically fit) and organisation. If one player flies up quickly in defence and those either side of him aren’t on the same page and hang back a bit more, you’re in big trouble and the opposition will make line breaks with ease.

Shaun used to hate players flying up individually. He always used to say if you got ahead of the ball, you could never recover. That’s what England will be looking to avoid doing against Scotland. Felix Jones has joined them as defensive coach from South Africa and has immediately introduced a blitz defence. England are already bringing a huge amount of line speed to their defence.

The organisation isn’t quite there just yet. But that takes time and England have only had two games with their new system. They will get there.

Jones and England will have talked a lot about Finn Russell. Finn is Scotland’s attacking conductor, but England’s blitz can’t just focus on him.

Finn is actually the sort of player that relishes the opposition flying up to smash him. He’s a very cool character.

And he knows that if a team is focusing on just him, that means there will be space outside him for others to exploit. Finn’s passing game is so good that he’ll find them even if he’s under pressure. England’s defence needs to come up as a collective — with just full back George Furbank hanging back behind the blitz to cover the kick — but focus just as much on where the ball might go rather than Russell alone. It sounds easy but is difficult to execute.