SCOTLAND captain Stuart Hogg insisted that he and his team-mates had believed all week that they could go down to Twickenham and win despite the supposed weight of history on their shoulders.
The full-back had arguably his finest game for his country, kicking and running superbly, and his team-mates showed they had bought into his unshakable self-belief as they claimed their first away win against England in 38 years.
“We truly believed we could come here and win,” Hogg said after the 11-6 triumph which sees the Calcutta Cup return to Scotland after just a year south of the Border. “It’s an amazing feeling to have done it.
“I had a huge amount of belief in the boys. The way we’ve been speaking to each other over the past couple of weeks, we felt really in control.
“Even when we came in at half time with Finn [Russell] in the bin, we were still calm. [Coach] Gregor [Townsend] spoke really well at half time. We still knew exactly what we were looking to do going into the second half and we executed it. We’re chuffed to bits.”
It was that awareness of what they wanted to do which marked out Scotland’s performance, as well as their confidence to put that desire into practice. Recent years have seen many performances in which they attacked well but were porous in defence, or defended well but lacked a cutting edge. Here, they achieved a high level of performance in both major aspects of the game.
“During the week we looked at making sure we got everything right on both sides of the ball, to make sure we gave ourselves every opportunity of coming here and winning,” Hogg continued. “We did exactly that. We had a clinical edge in our attack and defensively we fronted up. Any time England were attacking us, we stood firm.
“We were really positive in everything that we were doing, which is something we’ve worked hard on. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect. But that’s the exciting thing for us, because we know we can still improve.”
The next challenge for Scotland is Wales at Murrayfield on Saturday, and Hogg is confident the players will soon have their feet back on the ground after this superlative display.
“We’ll enjoy it tonight, but come Monday we’ll get back on the horse and get ready to go again. It’s one thing winning, but you need to be able to back it up again the following week.”
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