Former Scotland assistant coach Dean Ryan played six times for England, was director of rugby at Worcester, Gloucester and Bristol and worked in a player development role within the RFU. He is also part of the Melrose Falcons team set to cycle from Murrayfield to Cardiff’s Principality Stadium next week in aid of former team-mate Doddie Weir and his MND foundation.

THERE won’t be too many neutrals inside Murrayfield this weekend but you don’t have to be a Scotland or England fan to be excited about the prospect of the fly-half match-up between Finn Russell and Marcus Smith. It’s the purists’ dream and you have to hope it lives up to the billing.

Marcus was someone who was in the system when I was with the RFU so I would have had an arms-length sight of him as someone who was in the pathway. Even then you could see the outstanding potential that he had.

I remember being involved in sessions with him where we would try to put various constraints on him and the speed with which he could adapt to that at such a young age was incredible. So it’s been fascinating to observe his development from then to now with him on the cusp of his Six Nations debut.

I’m writing this before the England team announcement and intrigued to discover who Eddie Jones will play at 8 and 12 to support Marcus as those are two key positions. You look at Harlequins and he’s got Alex Dombrandt and Andre Esteruizen backing him up. Owen Farrell would have been the obvious choice at no. 12 – and would have provided both experience and pragmatism - and it is definitely a blow for England that he isn’t going to be available because of injury.

Last year’s Six Nations was obviously one to forget from an English perspective with the team finishing fifth, something very few would have anticipated. I’m expecting a significant improvement this year although, with an inexperienced side, I don’t think Eddie will be too hung up on winning this one. Next year’s tournament will be the one where he’ll want England to be fully firing with the World Cup taking place a few months down the line but doing well in this one can’t hurt either. You can never write off England as they’re so strong in resources

In my current role as Director of Rugby with Dragons I’ve watched a lot of Glasgow and Edinburgh in recent years and their good form has filtered into the Scotland set-up. You can see Gregor Townsend has a lot of choices there and quality in every position which stems from having two strong club sides.

That makes life tougher for England. In the past, winning in Edinburgh was often about how you handled the occasion and the drama but now they have to cope with a squad that is, on paper at least, every bit as good as them.

England previously would have travelled north looking to kill the occasion, play for position and muscle it. But Scotland are too good for that now. That would be an unrealistic route to success.

This is as tough an opener as England could have had but if they can defeat Scotland before heading to Italy then it could set them up nicely, especially with home games to follow against Wales and Ireland.

Having crowds back in general is great for the sport and really adds to the occasion. For England, if they can get back to Twickenham with two wins on the board then they’ll look to their fans to back them as they shoot for the Triple Crown. And after that it could all come down to the last day against France in Paris and what an occasion that could be. But a lot has to unfold before we get to that point.

I’ve been away from the English set-up for a few years now so am looking forward to this Six Nations primarily as a fan. Last year was obviously disappointing but I still believe Eddie has a strong squad with a lot of talented players and if he can get them playing to the levels that they're capable of then there’s no reason why they can’t win the tournament. But to do that they’ll need to overcome one of the toughest opening hurdles against a resurgent Scotland and that certainly won’t be easy.

As told to Graeme Macpherson