Reid out to play it cool in cauldron

GREGOR TOWNSEND has warned his players they need to keep cool heads to have a chance of beating England for the first time since 2008. Murrayfield will be a hotbed of patriotic fervour come Saturday tea-time but Townsend believes his men need to keep a lid on their own emotions if they are to claim the scalp of Eddie Jones’ Six Nations favourites.

‘Gregor’s message is about staying calm,’ said prop Gordon Reid. ‘Don’t play the occasion, carry on and do what you do, all that kind of stuff.

‘England are coming into the game as the big dogs and they will be definite favourites but we have to treat it as a normal game in the dressing room.

‘We have to do what we do as players. Do our own routines. If that involves beating your chest and shouting out loud, that is what you should still do. You have to do what you do before the England game to keep calm.

‘You are always going to get emotional because it is a Scotland game against England. I am Scottish through and through but we need to forget about how big a game it is and just go out there with clear heads.’

The London Irish forward understands exactly why Townsend is preaching the need for cool heads and calm after being part of the Scotland team that lost seven tries in the 61-21 loss at Twickenham last year.

‘The importance of keeping a lid on things against England was shown the last time we were down at Twickenham,’ said the Irvine-born 30-year-old. ‘Last year, we let our emotions get to us and that resulted in them beating us by a hefty amount.

‘It is a huge thing for us to keep level-headed, to stay calm, keep our heads strong and think positively.’

Scotland had built up a head of steam after Townsend took over as head coach last summer — including home and away wins over Australia — but Reid admits they were guilty of thinking they were ‘the best team in the world’ at the outset of this year’s Six Nations.

A heavy 34-7 defeat to Wales in Cardiff on day one shattered that illusion. ‘You are excited going into the Six Nations and you want to get going,’ said Reid. ‘We certainly did because we believed we were great, the best team in the world, which was not the case. Against Wales, everybody hyped us up: “Scotland are going to win, Scotland are going to win.” I think we obviously believed that. We believed we just needed to show up.

‘That didn’t happen and, in the French game, we knew we needed to put things right. That victory put us back on track and I think there is a lot more to come. Hopefully, that will come out against England.’

Incredibly, Scotland have only scored two tries against England at Murrayfield since the Six Nations began 18 years ago — one by Duncan Hodge in 2000 and the other by Simon Danielli in 2004. But No 7 Hamish Watson insists they would have no qualms about kicking their way to victory as they did in 2006 and 2008.

‘I don’t think we have to score tries to win,’ said Watson. ‘In the past, we have had all kicks from Chris Paterson to win games against England and the players and the fans would take that if it came to that.

‘Obviously, we are going to try to stick to our game plan and try to score tries but, if it comes down to that way of winning, we’d definitely take it.

‘If you put our record against England at home to one side, we are scoring more tries against most of the other teams, so we have got to try and do that too against England.

‘We got three tries at Twickenham last season but that was at the end after the game had gone. As a team, we have got a very good back-line and forwards who can also score tries.’

Meanwhile, understands that Townsend wants to give a vote of confidence to the players who started in the 32-26 win over France two weeks ago by picking them again to face England.

He had been considering bringing prop Willem Nel straight into the starting team after three months out injured but is instead set to keep faith with the in-form Simon Berghan at No 3.

Townsend still wants Nel to feature because of his power at the scrum and, if fit, he will go on to the bench at the expense of Jon Welsh.

SCOTLAND (probable) Hogg, Seymour, Jones, Horne, Maitland, Russell, Laidlaw, Reid, McInally, Berghan, Gilchrist, J Gray, Barclay, Watson, Wilson.