Samuel: No reason to be intimidated by England

His team’s Six Nations campaign may have got off to an ominous start on Saturday with a 38-7 defeat by Ireland, but Scotland Under-20s captain Alex Samuel insists he and his team-mates will remain in a positive frame of mind as they refocus on their next challenge against England on Friday.

There is no doubt that the sending off of Scottish flanker Harri Morris at the start of the second half was a pivotal moment on Saturday, with Ireland going on to register 24 unanswered points during the remainder of the match, but Samuel refused to use that as an excuse and insisted that he would rather focus on how the team reacted to that setback.

“There is a lot of learning to take from that into the next game,” said the second-row. “There were positives such as the lineout and scrum, and our defence was strong in the first half at times, so we just need to keep that going for a full 80.

“We played badly with 14 men,” he added. “It was difficult, but that’s not an excuse. We spent 50 minutes a man down [having also lost Michael Gray to a yellow card towards the end of the first half] and we were poor from then on, really. We just dropped off it a bit, and fair play to Ireland, they picked up the scrums.”

England battled back from 19-3 down after just 20 minutes of their campaign opener against France to secure an impressive 38-22 win, but Samuel insisted that Scotland have no reason to feel intimidated.

“We played them twice in warm-ups [ahead of the Six Nations] and we were competitive in both those games, so we can take confidence from that,” he explained.