Scotland’s incredible dismantling of England prompted joyous scenes among their fans, but also left a familiar question hanging in the air – can they back it up?
The Scots have now beaten England nine times in the Six Nations, with the first victory in 2000 coming in the final round of the Championship.
Following six of the other eight triumphs, Scotland have gone on to lose their next match.
Which brings us to Principality Stadium on Saturday. Round three and an opportunity for Scotland to properly put themselves in the mix for the title.
The emotional and physical energy expended in delivering these incredible Calcutta Cup victories has proved hard for Scotland to recover from and then replicate.
Scotland bounced back brilliantly from the gut punch of defeat to Italy in Rome to dispatch England in sensational fashion, but the memories of the Stadio Olimpico will remain with them, serving as a cautionary tale as they prepare to face a Wales side at a low ebb.
“We’ll obviously be sitting there with Italy in the back of our mind and that performance,” Scotland second row Scott Cummings said.
“We know that we can’t let our performance dip to that point again. We know that we can push on and we believe we can push on. But the weekend was just a start for us, now we need to back it up.
“In the nicest way possible, we’ve beaten England before. We’ve done this before in the Six Nations quite a few times and we probably haven’t backed it up after that, so that’s definitely a big focus for us.”
Captain Sione Tuipulotu spoke before the England match about how Scotland were “a desperate team” with their Six Nations hopes on the line. That desperation for a win surely applies to Wales this weekend.
Steve Tandy, the former Scotland defence coach now in charge of Wales, has watched his side get battered in their opening two matches against England and France.
They sit bottom of the table having scored only 19 points across two games while conceding 102.
France ran riot with eight tries in Cardiff to consign Wales to a 13th consecutive Six Nations defeat.
Yet Scotland have had enough bad experiences in Cardiff to never take a victory for granted, even with Welsh rugby in dire straits.
“I obviously know some of their coaching staff, Steve Tandy and [former Glasgow head coach] Danny Wilson,” Cummings said.
(BBC sport)
