Bruising Scots have ability to punish us if we are not careful

Jason Leonard
20 Mar 2009

While England are coming off an important win, you cannot escape the fact that we have only played 40 minutes of good rugby in the Six Nations. Yes, it was enough to beat France last Sunday and while we have been steadily improving since the woeful Italy game, we still have some way to go.

England, having defeated France, cannot afford to turn up at Twickenham tomorrow and make the same mistake their opponents did having just beaten Wales. We are not good enough to adopt that kind of blase attitude and need to put in another big performance or we could be in trouble.

Scotland have not won at Twickenham since 1983 and that's not a monkey on their backs, it's a big gorilla! However, I have always believed the Scots would be tough because in Euan Murray they have the best tight-head prop available to the Lions, good locks in Jason White, Jim Hamilton and Nathan Hines, a combative back row led by Simon Taylor, excellent scrum-halves in Mike Blair and Chris Cusitor along with Chris Paterson who has not missed a kick in the championship.

If England revert back to type, give away penalties and pick up yellow cards, then Paterson will kick every single point. Not long ago, that is exactly how we played with a big pack of forwards and great defence pressurising the opposition into errors and Jonny Wilkinson slotted goals. Teams would quickly find themselves 15-0 down to England and wonder how they were so far behind so early in the game.

The Scots players also know that coach Frank Hadden needs to get two wins from the championship to meet the demands of his contract and that's why his team will be busting a gut as they have only beaten Italy so far in this Six Nations.

Martin Johnson has been ticking all the necessary boxes as England team manager and this match is all about the quality of performance, building from the win over France. If England produce the right kind of display then the result will take care of itself.

I am not particularly worried about the war of words that's been happening in the last couple of days because the Calcutta Cup has never really needed hyping up. There is a ton of pride at stake and a battle of words won't make it any more combative.

While the Six Nations matches have been important in terms of selection for the Lions tour to South Africa, I still believe many of the player calls will be made from club rugby and Ian McGeechan showed this in 1997 when he picked Will Greenwood even though he hadn't been capped by England.

Any championship season with a Lions tour on the horizon was always exciting for me and by our own standards in 1997, it wasn't a great season for England but the tour was always in the back of my mind and it will be like that for many of the players involved tomorrow where I expect us to lift the Calcutta Cup after another bruising match.