A stunning result, and a performance to stir the blood on the opening weekend of the RBS 6 Nations Championship.

Or, perhaps, to chill it, if you happened to be English and saw portents of what might happen at Murrayfield today. Roared on by the passionate Borders crowd, the Scots blew their English counterparts off the Netherdale pitch and handed out rugby lessons in almost every area of the game.

The most critical of these was at the breakdown, where England struggled to cope with the intensity of the Scotland forwards and the interpretations of the Welsh referee. They were pasted in the penalty count as comprehensively as they were on the scoreboard and Scotland stayed on the front foot throughout. But Scotland also had the upper hand in the set-piece, and nullified the English maul, the one area where the Saxons might have been expected to dominate.

Coach Michael Bradley paid tribute to a pack that contained six Glasgow forwards, admitting that their familiarity with each other brought cohesion to their game. Ed Kalman, at tighthead, and Rob Harley, making a rare start in the second row, put in magnificent shifts, as did Chris Fusaro and Jon Welsh. Their voracious tackling and physicality made for a very uncomfortable evening for the Saxons.

To that brute force of the Scottish pack could be added the keen intelligence of the backline. Duncan Weir managed the play superbly, making a powerful case for his elevation to the full side in the near future. He won the man-of-the-match award, quite an achievement on a night that also produced a try of shimmering brilliance by full-back Stuart Hogg. "We got the go-forward in contact," smiled Bradley, the satisfied Scotland coach. "We went about our business very well. It was a good day at the office for the forwards."

Hogg's score came in the 16th minute, when he collected a loose Ryan Lamb clearance just outside his 22. Hogg has thrilled Firhill with his running from deep this season, but what he produced at Netherdale was something else. At full throttle, he swerved and shimmied his way back up the park, leaving a trail of would-be tacklers flailing in his wake. It was a quite sensational score.

And there was more to come. English indiscipline saw their captain, James Gaskell, sent to the sin bin in the 37th minute, and lock Ed Slater was yellow carded midway through the second half. All the while, the Scots turned the screw, and the second try, a smart solo effort from behind a scrum by Weir, was overdue by the time it arrived in the 51st minute.

Rory Lawson squeezed over in the right corner after intense Scottish pressure in the 61st minute. Six minutes later, England's humiliation was complete, when Weir flicked the ball on brilliantly to give Matt Scott a clear run in for the fourth try.

Nobody could quite believe the scoreline at the finish, but the best part of it was that it did not flatter the Scots one bit.