Gregor Townsend’s personal history with the Calcutta Cup is such that some wishful thinking was perhaps understandable when asked to compare the latest long wait for a Scotland win in the fixture with the period which ended with his own solitary victory in 10 clashes with England as player and five as a coach.

“I hope it’s not another 10-year wait. I hope it’s eight years and we beat them this time,” he said, presumably confusing the last victory in 2008 with the last time Scotland avoided defeat when drawing in 2010.

It is perhaps as well that his principal role is to attempt to make sporting history rather than record it, but memories can be affected by trauma and during the quarter of a century encompassed by his involvement there has been no shortage of that, beginning with his Test debut as a replacement at Twickenham in 1993 after Craig Chalmers suffered a double fracture

of his forearm, when a Scotland side that had been playing well was subsequently picked apart.

The following year Townsend dropped what he thought was the winning goal, only for the victory to be snatched from his side, the dramatic nature of a controversial ending which saw Jon Callard allowed to steal an England win with a penalty strike such that Scotland’s captain, Gavin Hastings, was reduced to tears in the post-match television interview.

That Duncan Hodge-inspired victory in 2000 – the stand-off scoring all Scotland’s points in an odds defying 19-13 win – stands alone from his playing days, while Townsend’s time as Scotland attack coach generated just one try in five encounters. Little wonder, then, that he is not among those who try to characterise this encounter as just another match.

“Look, they’ve always been good. Even in 1990, a famous win for us, they were good,” he acknowledged.“Whenever they’ve come up here, in my experience, they’ve been a good team. Now they’re number two in the world. They’ve won a huge number of games in the last two years.

“I grew up watching these games in the late eighties and early nineties and I saw all the passion that was involved in these fixtures,” he said. “I was lucky enough to play in a few and it’s certainly the fixture that brings more focus and more edge. You understand how much it means to the public.

“In 2000, we lost every game in that campaign, but we won the final game [against England] and it was such a huge boost to the country. The other four defeats seemed to be forgotten,

so we know what it means to our supporters and what it means to our players. We can see that in how they’ve trained this week.”

He said so after having engaged in what has been, on the basis of results and availability, the rare experience of being a Scotland head coach who was able to name an unchanged XV that had won its previous Six Nations Championship match, a reward, he explained, for their performance when beating France last week.

“We played a lot of good rugby in the first half and to be 10-0 down was due to the bounce of the ball as well as very good play by France,” he said.

“To show the resilience and skill to come back was very good. More important was how we played in the second half and the final 20 minutes. That squad deserve the reward of playing again.”

There could be little quibbling about that after what was only Scotland’s third Six Nations win against France, but Townsend’s decision to replace Finn Russell and shift Greig Laidlaw to stand-off in the latter stages of that match did seem to suggest he may have lost some faith in the mercurial, risk-loving play-maker he has long seemed to have identified as his own natural successor. Far from it, he insisted, however.

“Finn was very good in the second half. I believe that, if Finn had stayed on the field, we would have won the game and potentially had a couple of more tries. He was building into a really good game. He had a couple of breaks in the second half, putting other people into space,” the coach contended.

“He was a big part of how we were on the front foot against France in the second half and he has shown that in training over the past week, that physically he’s in good shape and he’s controlling our attack, been involved in the decision making, so he seems to be in a very good place.”

That analysis naturally invited questioning on why he chose to take off a player he believed was set to help his side win the match more easily than they ultimately did.

“Well this is me speculating after [the event],” Townsend admitted. “The reason we took him off was to get Ali Price on and, at the time, we felt Greig would be important. Goal kicking was a key factor to get ahead of France on the scoreboard.

“Finn would have kicked well too, so either of those players would have put us in a good place. What I mean by saying that Finn being on the field could have got us a couple of tries is that we could have got another couple in the last ten minutes.

“We had a couple of opportunities five metres from the try line, when we settled for the penalty instead of going to that extra ruck and scoring a try.”

Observing that the key to success for his players will be maintaining the belief that they can win and being prepared “to go deeper than they have gone before”, Townsend expressed considerable respect for the England team and their head coach Eddie Jones, under whom they have won

23 of 24 Test matches.

However, up against a counterpart who is notorious for indulging in pre-match mind games, the Scotland coach appeared to attempt some of his own when seeming to question the legality of the methods behind England’s defensive excellence, observing that: “It will be interesting to see whether they stay onside. We watched the game last year and we’ve watched their games over the last few weeks and to generate that line speed, especially off first phase, you have to make sure you stay ten metres back off lineouts before the ball is delivered and you don’t get beyond the back foot of the ruck in phase play.”

The match officials have been warned, then, along with Scotland’s players, as every advantage is sought in the latest bid to overturn history and the odds.