Calcutta Cup: Evenly matched Scotland and England both badly need a win
Lord help us! Is it really thirty years since that famous Grand Slam decider between Scotland and England at Murrayfield? I suppose it must be, if only because my ever more fallible memory retains a clearer picture of it than of many much more recent matches between the two old rivals. For Scots the Calcutta Cup is the most important match of the year; not so for England. It’s a game they are usually expected to win, one indeed which players, coaches and fans expect to win – and of course they do almost always win it at Twickenham, and more often than I like to remember at Murrayfield too.
There can be no talk of a Grand Slam in the run-up to this year’s game, both having lost in the first round of the tournament. In Dublin Scotland ran Ireland closer than they have done in recent years, and indeed came away kicking themselves because they believed they had failed to take chances to win. England went down 24-17 in Paris, and, in truth, the final score flattered them, for they were comprehensively outplayed for the first hour of the match.
Their defeat shouldn’t have been a surprise. Much has rightly been made of Scotland’s miserable record away from Murrayfield, but Eddie Jones’s England team haven’t been comfortable away from Fortress Twickenham. Since they won a Grand Slam in 2016, his first season as coach, their away record in the Six Nations has been: played 8, won 3, lost 5. Jones’s team has now lost twice in Paris (2018 and 2020), once in Dublin (2017), once at Murrayfield (2018) and once in Cardiff (2019).
After their experience in Paris, they come to Edinburgh with their pride dented and their ability doubted even by some of their supporters. They are bruised and wounded and consequently – many Scots fear – more dangerous. They come in the knowledge that if they lose today it will be the third defeat in a row, and their marvellous RWC semi-final demolition of the All Blacks will seem a very long time ago.
For the first time in his tenure, Eddie Jones’s judgement and ability are being questioned. He has responded by making five changes, only one forced on him by the injury to Manu Tuilagi. Scrum-half Ben Youngs with almost a hundred caps has been dropped to the bench. As Reggie Maudling said when Mrs Thatcher sacked him from her Shadow Cabinet, “there comes a time in every man’s life when he must make way for an older man”, in this case the replacement Willi Heinz who at 33 is three years older than Youngs, though inexperienced at the top level of the game. Youngs had a poor game in Paris, but so did the forwards in front of him. He looks like the scapegoat, or perhaps a sop to Cerberus.
When a coach makes voluntary changes after a defeat, it’s usually a sign that he has got his first selection wrong. It’s true that one of the changes allows the previously injured Mako Vunipola to return instead of Joe Marler, even though after the World Cup Final defeat, Jones said he should have started with Joe rather than with Mako. Still there is one change people were hoping for that he hasn’t made. The Sale Sharks flanker Tom Curry was outstanding at 6 in the World Cup. In Paris Jones played him at number 8, where he looked uncomfortable; he is at 8 again. Courtney Lawes who was on the flank now finds himself on the bench and his place taken by the less experienced Lewis Ludlum who has declared “we want to be brutal. We don’t want to give them an inch to breathe”. Will his actions match his words?
Usually when one looks at the Calcutta Cup line-ups, one shakes one’s head – that is, if it’s a Scottish head – and thinks of how few of the Scotland XV would – if qualified – get into the England team. In 2002-3 when Clive Woodward had assembled the team that would win the World Cup, one might dolefully have concluded that the answer was “none”. This time, even in the regrettable absence of Finn Russell who master-minded Scotland’s win at Murrayfield in 2018 and that extraordinary second-half comeback at Twickenham last year, the teams look more evenly balanced, and a composite side might have seven or eight Englishmen and eight or seven Scots.
Usually one fears that the English will be too powerful, and certainly there’s plenty of beef in this year’s one, also with players like Mako Vunipola, Maro Itoje, Tom Curry and Sam Underhill no shortage of skill. But the Scotland pack, still young and mostly home-grown, did remarkably well in Dublin, even being on top for most of the game. There’s only one change in the Scotland team, Magnus Bradbury at number 8 instead of Nick Haining.
Haining, whose rugby journey has taken him from Western Australia to Jersey and Bristol, other places too perhaps, before arriving in Edinburgh, had a pretty good first international last week, but Bradbury would have started in Dublin if he hadn’t picked up a niggle in training. He is a raw-boned West Highlander, reared in Oban, in style of play somewhat like Johnnie Beattie ten or so years ago, even of Johnnie’s father John, a Lion way back in 1980. Like Curry he has played most of his rugby at 6 rather than 8, but he has more experience of 8 than the Englishman, and the all-Edinburgh back row of Jamie Ritchie, Bradbury and Hamish Watson may well be Scotland’s best for years. The contest at the breakdown is going to be ferocious and critical.
England’s attack behind the scrum was very much a one-man show in Paris, Johnny May scoring two brilliant tries and nobody else doing much that was good. Scotland’s backs were also disappointing against Ireland, showing little of the flair they are capable of displaying.
Unfortunately the forecast is for strong winds and rain. So neither set of backs may have much chance to shine, though of course the modern rugby ball is easier to handle than the old leather balls used to be, and anyway all the players nowadays have experience of nasty weather conditions in Friday evening matches in the late autumn and winter months. Still one hopes that the weather gods have the decency to postpone the arrival of the storm till the referee has whistled for “full time”.
If England are at their best as against New Zealand in Japan, they will surely win, and would probably do so even short of their best at Twickenham. But, though Murrayfield may not be as daunting to visitors as the Principality Stadium in Cardiff – or, of course, as Twickenham – Scotland even in bad years can be very hard to beat there. And though the Dublin match ended in defeat, Scotland did enough there to suggest that this may not be one of those bad years.