Jamie Ritchie hopes the recent form of both Edinburgh and Glasgow can help give Scotland an edge in the upcoming Six Nations.
Glasgow have won seven of their last eight games in all competitions, while Ritchie watched on from the sidelines as his Edinburgh colleagues made it three wins on the spin with an impressive 20-14 Champions Cup win over Saracens on Sunday.
“Certainly for the guys who played in that game, it will be a definite confidence boost knowing there were so many (England) internationals in that Saracens team and we dominated them for most of the game,” said Scotland captain Ritchie.
“We’ll take a huge amount of confidence from that. Both Edinburgh and Glasgow have hit a bit of form coming into this tournament so that can only bode well for our squad.”
Ritchie’s side kick off their campaign away to England a week on Saturday, but Twickenham no longer holds the same sense of trepidation for the Scots after they drew there four years ago and then followed it up with victory in 2021, ending a 38-year wait for success at the home of the Auld Enemy.
Results in recent years mean Gregor Townsend’s team go into the tournament with a sense of expectation rather than hope.
“Growing up watching Scotland it was often hopefully, but for us now we’re confident that we can win every game we go into,” said Ritchie.
“For us, it’s more about dealing with what comes along with that expectation in terms of criticism and scrutiny if you don’t live up to those expectations.
“We’d rather have it that way though because it shows the nation has belief in us that we can play well and win games.”
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