‘I could already see Russell was special’

Pro14, although that is, of course, a double-edged sword.

“You’re not going into that unknown,” said Mcinally. “Against France you knew who the players were because you sit and look at laptops all week, but you don’t have that thing against Wales, where you know them inside out because you play them every week.

“So it does help when you know the little things they like to do, or just things like the scrum. We played against [Tadhg] Furlong and [Cian] Healy [of Leinster] at the start of the year with Edinburgh. It gives you a bit more knowledge of what they like to do.

“But when you get in the Test arena it’s totally different in terms of intensity and I know they’ll be looking at this game as a massive target as well, because they want to go into that England week still top of the league, so we’re excited.” Sean Maitland recalled yesterday that his first encounter with man-of-the-moment Finn Russell came on the other side of the world when the Calcutta Cup hero was still an apprentice stonemason eager to expand his rugby knowledge.

Russell was a recipient of the 2013 Macphail Scholarship, by which he spent 15 weeks in New Zealand playing for clubs in the Canterbury area and training with Super Rugby side Crusaders.

Maitland said: “I first met Finn when I was with the Crusaders and saw him bopping around the gym as a youngster. I could see what he could do and heard around about what he was doing in club rugby over there [in Scotland].”

Maitland, pictured, moved to Glasgow soon after and said: “It is great to see how each year he has taken his game to the next level.

“Obviously, he was under the pump a bit from everyone in the first two [Six Nations] games, but he stepped up and deservedly got man of the match against England.”

Maitland didn’t get too much time to celebrate the Calcutta Cup win, in which he scored Scotland’s second try, as he headed back to Saracens, although didn’t play at the weekend ahead of Saturday’s game in Ireland.

“I saw a few England boys during the week, I was humble in victory and they were humble in defeat,” added Maitland. “A few smiles. The chest wasn’t out too much.”

Maitland returned to the camp this week, joined by an influx of ten reinforcements as Scotland prepare to throw everything at the last two weeks of the competition. “We’ve got some quality coming back. Some headaches for the coaches, for sure,” said the wing. “A lot of experience – it is good to see Richie [Gray] back, and Fraser [Brown] and Alex [Dunbar] – so much quality and so much competition. It is not a bad headache for the coaches. It is consistency we are after. Just because we have beaten England, no-one thinks they are definitely going to start again. No-one is complacent.”