In pursuit of extra motivation, England’s coaches could do a lot worse on the eve of this game than replay the episode of Full Contact, the Netflix fly-on-the-wall show based around last year’s Six Nations, in which a grinning Russell cheekily refers to a tartan Calcutta Cup victory as “normal” these days.
Succumb once again to the wiles of Russell and Van der Merwe, who has scored five tries against England in his past two games facing the “auld enemy”, and Caledonian sniggering will grow ever louder.
It is easy to forget England made an encouraging start, conjuring a lovely early try for George Furbank not dissimilar in its execution to Elliot Daly’s dramatic score against France last Saturday week.
One Red Rose win in seven attempts and four consecutive victories for Gregor Townsend’s side has certainly been an uncomfortable sequence for those who, for decades, regarded death and taxes as only marginally more inevitable than Scotland losing down south.
The last time England lost three or more consecutive home games in this fixture was in the early 1900s before Twickenham became their spiritual home.
