Six Nations 2026: Which side of ‘split personality’ Scotland will face England?

It’s tremendous knockabout stuff, but it rather overestimates the scale of the challenge Scotland have faced when playing against England in the Townsend era. Frankly, England haven’t been all that good. They’ve been far from the acid test of Scotland’s true worth.

All of these Scotland victories – were they because the Scots raised their game or because England were disorganised defensively, weak mentally and relatively easy prey to some brilliance in Townsend’s backline?

Scotland haven’t won anything, Lawes is correct. England are not exactly dripping with silverware themselves. They have won one Six Nations in that time. They have finished fifth in the table more often than they’ve finished first.

France, Ireland and Wales have all won Grand Slams during that period from 2017 since Townsend stepped up. England, for all their resources, haven’t won a Slam in a decade and have won only two in the history of the Six Nations.

In the past eight Six Nations they’ve finished first once, second twice, third twice, fourth once and fifth twice. Beating England has not been akin to climbing Everest.

Maybe it’s not about Scotland supposedly playing above themselves, as Lawes and others would argue. Maybe it’s been more about England not being good enough.

The fear for Scotland is that head coach Steve Borthwick has now cracked it. Twelve wins in a row, a well drilled team in all departments, excellent leaders, a mighty bench – all the impressions are that the foundations are solid, that the team is less susceptible to the kind of chaos that Scotland will want to inflict on them on Saturday.

Murrayfield should be a huge examination of their new found mettle, though. Tuipulotu shone a bright spotlight on what he calls Scotland’s “desperation” ahead of the Calcutta Cup.