SCOTLAND captain Stuart Hogg has insisted that his squad are not thinking of themselves as potential winners of the Six Nations Championship despite last week’s historic triumph over England. The full-back expects Wales to present an extremely tough challenge for his team at BT Murrayfield this afternoon, and warned that looking further ahead could be calamitous.
“Last week is done with,” Hogg said of the 11-6 win at Twickenham. “We can draw a line in the sand – take a huge amount of confidence from it – but understand that this week we’re going to have to make it happen again.
“If we look too far ahead we’re going to slip up. We have to live in the moment and make sure we get everything right.
“I’m not looking past the 20th minute of this game. We’re all very focussed on doing our individual roles to the best of our ability, and making sure that we give ourselves every opportunity to go on and win it. Once we get to that stage, I’ll concentrate on the next 20 minutes. So, no, I’m not looking too far ahead.
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“I’m not going to sit here and say we’re going to do x, y and z. In reality we have to perform for 80 minutes tomorrow to be in with a shout of achieving our goal. We’re in a good place and ready for it and the boys are excited.”
Hogg also confirmed that, as head coach Gregor Townsend forecast on Thursday, the squad will stand during the pre-match ‘moment of reflection’ rather than taking a knee as some of them did last week. “We have talked about it and the fact that we do stand against racism. Last week we weren’t aware of the things that were going to be happening pre-game.”
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