FEW members of the current Scotland squad know how it feels to beat England, but Ross Ford has enjoyed that pleasant experience twice. The hooker, who will win his 95th cap in today’s Calcutta Cup match, came off the bench in the 18-12 win in 2006, then started the 15-9 victory two years later.
The key to getting the better of England both times, Ford explained yesterday, was “creating chaos”. But, as he reminisced about those two results and looked forward to this afternoon’s game, it became clear that “chaos” was something designed to happen only within the opposition ranks. The key for Scotland is to control the game - above all the set piece, where Ford and his front-row colleagues Alasdair Dickinson and WP Nel have formed an increasingly impressive unit.
“It was that long ago I barely remember,” he began when asked about those two home wins over England. “On both occasions the weather was particularly bad.
“We managed to create a lot of chaos and that was the big thing. Defensively we were pretty good and we took our chances. Those are the things that I remember.
“Something we look to do all of the time is create chaos both in defence and in attack. That’s something we need to look at doing once again.
“We have trained well this week and we have our systems in place. We also need to operate at a tempo and pace which allows us to bring that chaos.
“It’s something we tried to do at the World Cup and it worked well for us. Hopefully we have improved since then and we can show that when we kick off tomorrow.”
Scotland have certainly improved since he won his first cap against Australia a dozen years. Now, as he closes in on a century of Test appearances, Ford is sure that the front row he is part of along with Edinburgh team-mates Dickinson and Nel is the best he has known.
“It’s certainly up there as being the best front row I’ve played in. It’s been good being able to work with WP and Dicko at Edinburgh. There are so many different packs and we have managed to solve so many problems during games - and that’s good for us coming into an international as we have come up against most things.
“We know how to fix a lot of them during the game. It’s certainly a good front row we have in place.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here