Ben White drives past Twickenham Stadium almost every day on his way to train with London Irish at the Hazelwood Centre in nearby Sunbury-on-Thames, and like any ambitious rugby player he has often wondered what it would be like to perform in front of a packed house at that iconic venue.

On Saturday, he realised that dream – but not in the white jersey of England, who he represented at under-17, under-18 and under-20 levels. Instead, he was in the navy blue of Scotland, to whom he switched allegiance ahead of the 2022 Six Nations – he qualifies to wear the thistle through his grandfather – and his first experience of playing international rugby at RFU HQ could hardly have gone any better.

The 24-year-old scrum-half performed a crucial role in Scotland’s third consecutive victory over their oldest and fiercest rivals, with his crisp service key to Scotland’s back line having the space they needed to secure a bonus-point win from a game in which the away team commanded only 43 per cent of possession and 29 per cent of territory.

The icing on the cake for the player was his own virtuoso score in the 50th minute which got Scotland back into the contest after a fraught start to the second half, when he scooped up scrappy ruck ball and danced past two English defenders on his way to the line.

“Driving past the stadium, it’s been on my mind that I’d love to play here against England,” he said. “I just wanted that opportunity and I’m very grateful to [Scotland coach] Gregor [Townsend] for giving it to me. I know what it means to the fans, I spoke to a few supporters at the end.”

White appears to be developing a happy habit of scoring tries against the country of his birth, having come off the bench as a temporary replacement for Ali Price to open the scoring for Scotland in last year’s Calcutta Cup success at Murrayfield.

His selection ahead of Price and the in-form George Horne for this match was a big call by Townsend, and White repaid that faith, meaning he is expected to start again against Wales on Saturday – when Scotland will hope to shed their reputation as a team which swings wildly between triumph and disaster from one week to the next.

“I think you can see the mindset shift,” White said. “As soon as the whistle sounded, we went right into a huddle on the pitch.

“We’re a bit sick of having the same story written. You know, beat England and then lose to Wales. We want to make it two wins from two and give a performance the nation can be proud of, it’s as simple as that.

“We are very clear on what we want to do and where we want to go as a group. We know we need to back this up, it’s something we are very aware of and something we spoke about at the end of the game.

“It’s all well and good doing it on Saturday. But we’re now facing a Wales team that lost to Ireland this weekend, so we know they are going to come and try and right that wrong.

“We need to focus on us. We need to get the mental stuff right.

“Wales are a good team, it’s as simple as that, but we have good players too and we just need to be confident. We are trying to be a smart team.

“We need to be focused from minute one. We need to be clinical in attack, it’s all on us.

“It wasn’t the perfect performance against England, but I think we did enough to get the win.

“In the first half we didn’t get the ball moving as fast as we would have liked, it was a bit stop-start, but in the second half we got more ball in hand and we were able to get it out wide.”

White added a few words of praise for Duhan van der Merwe after his spectacular brace of tries against England.

“He’s a special, special player. He’s shown that so many times for Scotland. He trains really hard and when he gets the ball in that situation, he backs himself.

“When he gets going, he’s very hard to stop because he’s a big human being. He was brilliant, he beat five defenders for the first try.”