Centre Jones after crushing defeat

the strength and character within this group is enough that we can bounce back and hopefully have a good result next week.

“There’s a bit of both anger and disappointment. Anger at ourselves for whatever that was and just disappointment that we have come down here with high hopes and got nothing out of it.

“You have these losses a lot in sport. We have all had these losses growing up and this is obviously on a bigger stage. So we will know how to come back from this.

“I don’t think England did anything different from what we expected, we just made stupid mistakes.

“We’ll obviously review it and then put it behind us.”

Scotland coach Vern Cotter was just as blunt, saying: “It’s really about accepting that it wasn’t a great performance from us. My biggest concern was to see how many players I’ll be able to put on the field the next week. In two away games we’ve had eight concussions.

“We’re disappointed we didn’t get a fourth try and frustrated we didn’t get to show what we think we’re capable of doing for long periods.

“We didn’t put in the plays we needed or the defence we needed to get close to England today. They performed very well.”

Skipper John Barclay added: “We’ll look at the video and dust ourselves off pretty quick. It will be a pretty brutal review. “It certainly wasn’t a good day. “We’re a good group of men, we’re not kids, nobody will try and shirk blame. There will be some hard truths, but we have to be able to dust ourselves off. It’s pretty dark at the moment.

“We still have the possibility of finishing second so there is a lot to play for still, but obviously we’ve got to learn some lessons.”