Six Nations: Scotland get their revenge

This time last year, Scotland were hammered 61-21 by England, said Robert Kitson in The Guardian. And only four weeks ago, Gregor Townsend’s players made a “wretched start” to the Six Nations when they lost 34-7 to Wales. But in Edinburgh last Saturday, the Scots “completed one of the great turnarounds in any team sport in recent times” when they beat England 25-13. This was no “ambush”, said Chris Foy in the Daily Mail. Unlike many previous Scottish victories over England, it was not a “gutsy, goal-kicking upset”. Scotland “emphatically outclassed the world’s No. 2 ranked nation”: they “out-thought and out-fought” the English. They scored more points than in any Calcutta Cup match since 1986 – and inflicted only the second defeat of Eddie Jones’s 26-match reign as England coach.

England’s defeat “has been coming” for a while, said Clive Woodward in the same paper. Their run under Jones has not been “quite as impressive” as the statistics suggest. Almost two years have passed since their three “awesome” victories over Australia. Since then, they have been “grinding out wins” without “taking teams apart” – and against Wales last month they went an hour without scoring a point. Even in those matches, however, England were dependably “resilient”, said Owen Slot in The Times. They always managed to keep “calm heads in the face of enemy fire”. Not this time: after they fell behind in Edinburgh, they looked “rattled”. And as the players became increasingly desperate, they were let down by a familiar failing, said Brian Moore in The Daily Telegraph: ill-discipline. They gave away 13 penalties, their second-highest tally under Jones. Some of those offences were dismayingly basic – kicking the ball out of a player’s hands, for instance. “I don’t care if Jones has to fine players to get this to stop, but stop it must.”

The Scots have a reputation for shirking the “dirty work” of rugby, said Mark Palmer in The Sunday Times. But in Edinburgh, they met England “nose-to-nose and nose-to-ground, in the same dark alleys” where they’ve so often met “a grisly end” in this fixture. Townsend’s tactics were “right on point”: his side “niggled and narked”; they mauled with conviction, in both attack and defence. Crucially, they were dominant at the breakdown, said Gavin Mairs in The Daily Telegraph. In the first half, England were “completely overwhelmed in the contest for the ball on the floor” – which allowed the Scots to score three tries. As the creator of two of those tries, Finn Russell “lit up Murrayfield”, said Stuart Barnes in The Times. A “master at work”, the “cheeky” fly-half unpicked England with his passing and kicking. It was “a triumph for man and country” – and “a triumph for rugby union”.