HIS cocky cheeriness was in stark contrast to the demeanour of the man against whom he had been pitting his brains and there was ultimately something almost contemptuous about Eddie Jones’ assessment of the way his England team had handed Vern Cotter’s team a Scottish record for successive Six Nations Championship defeats.

The little Australian whose job is to rebuild English confidence after their demoralising performance as World Cup hosts, had seen his team take a major step in the right direction against hosts who had been very vocal in expressing their belief in themselves following that tournament.

Jones felt his men had been forced to concentrate on defensive control of the match because of the way it was

officiated, but for all that a single converted score separated the teams at the end, he clearly felt they had complete control of their own destiny on this first experience of the Six Nations Championship which brooding Kiwi Cotter had predicted he would find an eye-opening experience.

“It was interesting coming on the bus here, you had all the Scottish supporters coming out of the pub, but I saw a fair few English supporters,” he said, indicating that he had sought to absorb the atmosphere fully.

“Then we got off the bus and they were going crazy, the Scottish, and there was one little English boy with his beanie on just outside the bus and for five minutes he yelled ‘come on England, come on England’. His voice was being drowned out but he kept going and that was a bit like the team today. We kept going, we kept plugging ahead and in the end we won the game easily.”

Feeling the need to elaborate he mischievously poked fun at the rather outmoded points system which the Six Nations clings to as one of the few major rugby competitions that has yet to reward teams for scoring four tries or, indeed, staying within seven points as Scotland managed to.

“We scored two tries to nil,” Jones said. “If there was a bonus point we would have gone for four but there are no bonus points are there?”

Turning his attention to next week’s trip to Rome which should provide England with the chance to generate the sort of momentum that can be crucial in this short, sharp tournament, Jones got started on the mind games for which he is notorious.

“We can improve 100 per cent in Rome,” he reckoned. “It might be sunny, nice grass, [Sergio] Parisse will be having shots at field goals so there might be a bit of kick return for us, so we can open up a little bit.”

That was a reference to the Italian captain’s last gasp bid to win his team’s opening match against France with a drop goal effort that went badly wrong.

“I saw his last attempt … it was terrible,” Jones observed. “He’s one of the greatest players in the world but he’s definitely not a field goal guy.”

In appointing his own captain Jones had courted controversy by opting for a fellow antipodean in

Dylan Hartley, who has what might kindly be described as a dubious track record having spent more than a full year of his career on the sidelines as a result of suspensions for a variety of offences.

However, having admitted that his own edginess, often expressed verbally, had been among his major contributions during his playing days as a lightweight hooker, Jones looked to have indulged in a common coaching ploy of identifying an on-field leader in his own likeness.

He had said in the build-up that he felt there was nothing wrong with England expressing themselves in the manner that Celtic opponents often find arrogant, and the skipper duly lived up to expectations in that regard.

Asked how much nervousness he had felt ahead of leading his adopted country for the first time, Hartley said: “I know the two weeks we had we got on the same page pretty quickly. We worked hard, we were well prepared, so I wasn’t nervous. What was there to be nervous about?”

What, indeed. Eight years having elapsed since England lost to Scotland, at no stage did it look like happening yesterday, with both teams now aware that the World Cup is already all very last year.