Scotland’s record at Twickenham may be dreadful, but their captain insists that the memory of last year’s Calcutta Cup win is more relevant to the team that is seeking to end the 36-year wait for an away win in the rugby’s oldest international fixture.
Injuries have contributed to the fact that Stuart McInally is one of just eight members of today’s 23-man squad who were involved in that victory, but that result was a major surprise against a team that had won 24 of its previous 25 matches and they believe they can produce another upset.
"It's 80 minutes on a green pitch and there are two teams who are going to go at it. We respect how well England have played, but we're down here to try and win,” said the hooker.
"The feeling in the camp is really good. We're desperate to put in a strong performance for the people of Scotland but also for ourselves.”
He acknowledged that after two campaigns that had seen Scotland win more matches than they had lost in 2017 and 2018, this squad has failed to live up to expectations that they could consider themselves contenders to win the Six Nations Championship for the first time, but said they retain faith in their ability to compete with the best.
"We've underperformed in areas of this tournament and we're disappointed with that, but there's no lack of belief in the players that we're doing everything we can to win,” said McInally.
"Obviously we have the confidence that we can do it because we know we've done it in the last 12 months.
"It's going to be an intense game and it will be about whoever plays the best rugby on the day. We take confidence from knowing we can beat them, but we're under no illusions about how hard it will be.
"We are not competing for the championship and that's disappointing from where we wanted to be right from the start, but in terms of the pressure being off, I wouldn't agree with that. The pressure is always on when you play for Scotland and we love that."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here