LONG READ High stakes as Scotland seek historic fifth straight Calcutta Cup win

If a wearily familiar sting of failure hung over Scotland’s players in the days following their latest loss to Ireland (11 and counting), their mood might have lifted to something almost approaching nostalgia as they flew out for a training camp in Spain last weekend to prepare for their next Six Nations mission.

Returning to the Oliva Nova Beach & Golf Resort south of Valencia should have brought back some more positive vibes, and not just because it was around 15C warmer there earlier this week than their usual base in Edinburgh.

It is in these balmy climes on the Balearic coast where Scotland have prepared for their first game of the Six Nations for the past three years. On each occasion they have proceeded to win their opening fixture.

Last year it was Wales in Cardiff – just. The two before that were against England, part of a record-equalling sequence of four successive victories against the Auld Enemy.

As they target a fifth on Saturday, which would be unprecedented in the 154-year history of the oldest international fixture, it is perhaps easier to understand why Gregor Townsend opted for another Spanish sojourn, even if this one comes before a pivotal middle game of the campaign, rather than the first.

Maybe he had an inkling his squad might need a reviving change of scene after the Ireland game. Maybe he was hoping to tap into the memories of a temporary base camp from which previous heights were scaled.

Outlining his reasons before the start of the championship, the Scotland head coach said: “Not only are you guaranteed training outdoors and better weather, but there’s a real bubble mentality. There are no distractions. Guys aren’t going home in the evenings or on days off.”

Most commentators and pundits expect England to build on that epic win over one of the fancied runners. You won’t find a bookmaker who disagrees.

Cocooned in that bubble was perhaps a good place to be this week before the squad flew to London on Thursday for a Calcutta Cup contest with even more riding on it than usual – for both teams.

Whichever one finishes on the wrong side of the scoreboard at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium, recriminations, scrutiny and further questions about the direction of travel under the existing coaching set-up are bound to follow.

England may have just beaten France in dramatic style to end their run of near-misses  against elite opposition, but if they don’t follow it up by putting Scotland back in their box, what does that say about the character and consistency of Steve Borthwick’s team?

Most commentators and pundits expect England to build on that epic win over one of the fancied runners. You won’t find a bookmaker who disagrees. They make the hosts odds-on favourites and if they are correct, Borthwick’s side can contemplate the sunlit uplands of the Six Nations rather than the mid-table mediocrity of the past four years. A campaign which began with defeat in Dublin could yet yield four wins and an outside shot at the title with Italy and Wales to follow.

But while not quite to the same extent perhaps, with France away on the final day, the same holds true for Townsend’s men. Remain undefeated at Twickenham for a fourth game in a row – a run that started with that bonkers 38-38 draw in 2019 – and the narrative of Scotland’s campaign changes again.

Victory would set them up nicely for the visit of Wales to Murrayfield in round four and – conceivably – their own outside shot at glory in Paris, where they won in 2021 and came up just short in 2023, even if Ireland have effectively wrapped up the title by then.

But if the ultimate goal of a first Six Nations title remains on the high side of remote, even to head into the last round with the chance of winning a fourth game in a campaign for the first time would represent some tangible progress for this Scottish side.

It would be hard to escape a sense of drift and stagnation if this campaign ended with only two wins for the third season out of four

Defeat on Saturday would not only end the possibility of that glass ceiling being shattered for at least another 12 months, but also likely condemn the Scots to another humdrum, lower mid-table finish.

After achieving three victories in three of Townsend’s first four Six Nations campaigns from 2018 to 2021, it would be hard to escape a sense of drift and stagnation if this campaign – his eighth in all – ended with only two wins for the third season out of four, assuming Wales are overcome on 8 March.

With in-demand Glasgow head coach Franco Smith indicating his desire to return to Test coaching at some point, speculation around whether Townsend will see out his current contract – which runs until April 2026 – is only likely to increase if his side suffer a further setback this weekend in the 90th Test of his tenure.

With a win percentage exceeding 57 per cent, Townsend has the best winning record of any Scotland coach. Four of Scotland’s six best Six Nations campaigns have come on his watch and lest we forget, his record against England reads P7 W5 D1 L1.

Even now, long-suffering supporters who remember the traumas of the 1990s and early 2000s must have to blink and do a double-take at how the tables have turned since 2018.

Throw in the huge chasm in playing resources between the two countries and it seems incredibly harsh to suggest a failure to extend their winning run in the Calcutta Cup would feel like a regression for this group. But lofty achievements provoke loftier expectations and ambitions, which remain unfulfilled.

This one has a special place in our hearts. I don’t know, maybe it does mean more to us, maybe that’s why we’ve won in the last couple of years.

All is far from lost though. If the sight of green jerseys induce something close to nausea and a fatalistic pessimism among folk of a tartan persuasion, white shirts emblazoned with a red rose stir an entirely different cocktail of emotions.

“It certainly means a lot to us,” said Scotland flanker Jamie Ritchie, who has started all four successive wins over England, with just a hint of under-statement this week.

“We want to beat England just as much as we want to beat any other team in the Six Nations but, yeah, this one has a special place in our hearts. I don’t know, maybe it does mean more to us, maybe that’s why we’ve won in the last couple of years.”

It would be no surprise if the overt physicality and breakdown ferocity which strangely went missing in that dispiriting first half-hour against Ireland made a swift comeback.

“It was an area that we were a bit disappointed with last weekend, as you’d imagine,” noted assistant coach Peter Horne, who started the momentum-turning 2018 fixture in Townsend’s first Six Nations campaign.

“There’s been a lot of honest conversations. I know our boys are really keen to get out and right some wrongs. There will be that desperation to stay in the tournament and get a really good win,” he added.

In many ways this is being billed as a classic England v Scotland narrative: a more physically imposing red rose pack – at least the back five of it anyway – trying to gain dominance up front while a more lightweight, fleet-of-thought-and-foot Scottish side try to out-wit the home side and unleash their attacking weapons in the backline.

If that is a little simplistic, given England’s own progress in attack, Scotland’s game-plan is not likely to move too far away from the Townsend template which has proved so successful in this fixture.

His sides have scored 19 tries to England’s 14 over the past seven years, 10 of them in the past four contests. Six of those have come from tormentor-in-chief Duhan van der Merwe, plenty of them of the ‘worldie’ variety.

There was the sensational, hot-stepping, 60m solo effort at Twickenham two years ago, the brilliant finish to a stunning team try to win the same game and the scorching touchline surge from inside his own half amid a hat-trick at Murrayfield last year.

Van der Merwe can expect more opportunities against a red rose defence that was regularly exposed in the wider channels by France, while centre Huw Jones is also partial to a try in this fixture, with five to date.

Finn Russell, meanwhile, has more victories (five) against England to his name than any other living Scotsman. The fly-half sorcerer has saved some of his most spectacular moments for the Calcutta Cup and you imagine he will enjoy testing out kindred spirit Marcus Smith, wearing 15 for England, with his attacking kicking game.

More prosaically, with all three of Scotland’s back-rowers – as well as both locks – offering a lineout option, the visitors are likely to target England’s set-piece in a way France seemed strangely reluctant to, given the hosts’ over-reliance on captain Maro Itoje as their main jumper before Ollie Chessum entered the fray.

Chessum’s presence from the start this week may offset that to a degree, but Scotland’s lineout operation has been impressively solid so far, with a 100 per cent success rate from 13 throws against Italy – plus one steal of the visitors’ – and 13 out of 14 against Ireland, bar one maddening loss before half-time after kicking a penalty into the Irish 22.

While that ability to seize a momentum-shifting moment in the opposition red zone remains an Achilles heel at times, the Scots’ jumpers also disrupted four of Ireland’s 10 throws, while England failed to secure three of their own cleanly against France.

Scotland have also shown an ability to close out tight games against England of late, with this one shaping to be another ferociously contested, seesaw encounter that should go down to the wire.

The stakes are high and the odds are against it, but it is not beyond them.

And we haven’t each mentioned the Lions context, with so many individuals on both sides keen to advance their cause in direct competition with rivals for a place in the squad or the Test team – notably at half-back, midfield, the back row and wing. Having stumbled against Ireland, plenty of Scots need to make a statement here.

If 2018 transformed their Calcutta Cup mentality, the 2019 comeback stretched the boundaries of possibility and 2021 finally ended 38 years of Twickenham torment, 2023 was arguably one of the greatest all-round displays under Townsend.

It may take something similarly extraordinary to write another historic chapter in this storied fixture. The stakes are high and the odds are against it, but it is not beyond them.