England players have had enough of Scotland celebrating their recent Calcutta Cup victory, with Joe Marler insisting his side are ready for what he considers their most “vicious” game yet.
Scotland have hosted the Calcutta Cup since 2021 and both sides have won their last three Six Nations matches, while England have won just once in their last six. Steve Borthwick believes Scotland are “clear favorites” for Saturday’s match, a testament to the turn of events considering England won the trophy between 2009 and 2018.
As Mahler puts it, Scotland’s “continued dominance” of late has led to some unforgettable celebrations, 2018 Finn Russell and Greig Laidlaw film watch Getting up even worse for wear and singing “Flower of Scotland”, Eddie Jones accosted Scotland supporters the next day and still hasn’t forgotten it a year later. “We knew this was their best game of the year,” he said in 2019. “We saw what they did last year when they beat us. So, sometimes our memory can be short, but sometimes your memory is longer.”
Gregor Townsend’s side are screaming in the Twickenham dressing room in 2022, as featured in the recently released Netflix documentary Six Nations: Full Contact was shown, and the photo of Russell posing stayed in Mahler’s mind. The prop points to the defeat at Murrayfield in 2018 – which saw a pre-match brawl between Ryan Wilson, George Ford and Owen Farrell in the tunnel – as the turning point and believes England will be in the best position going into this game Disadvantages. But he is determined to enjoy his Calcutta Cup celebrations after England’s recent slump.
“Still, I’m pretty sure… when was the last battle between England and Scotland?” Mahler said. “I’m sure that was a long time ago. Ryan Wilson’s tunnel clash sums up Peak Peak very well and it’s what you expect in these games. If only there could have been one time to be the winner. That’s great because we haven’t had that for a long time. Obviously we’ve had 2020, but Scotland’s continued dominance over us… has been a long time coming.
“I remember growing up watching the Five Nations, back-end and Six Nations games and how people celebrated winning that trophy and how much that game meant. People were talking about that game for Scotland It means something, but I watched that game and you could see from the winning England team what it meant to them to win that trophy.
“In the past few years, Finn and Greg Laidlaw haven’t seen that mug, the video of them taking off their shirts and singing with the mug. It’s awesome, I love it, but I wish I could do that instead Watch it. Or that famous photo of Finn Russell with Spider-Man’s hands raised, which he loved. That sparked a passion in me like, ‘I want that trophy,’ and I Knowing that some of the other boys on the team want to get that trophy back.”
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England captain Jamie George believes his side have been eliminated in Scotland and was asked about last year’s opponents’ celebrations. “We’ve shown some of that this week,” he said. “You don’t want to play the game too early, you don’t want to rev up the game too early, but this is a game that’s more important than ever and our senior players have stepped up and shown what it takes. I would certainly want to do that. , a lot of other senior players will be looking to do the same and if we bring in a lot of talented youngsters I think it will be a good performance.”
George, who hopes to lead his side to three consecutive Six Nations wins for the first time since 2020, added: “We’ve talked about the record at Twickenham, the Calcutta Cup, [we] The past few years haven’t been good enough.
“A lot of people in the Scottish media are talking about us not having a chance and we’d better not turn up. In my mind, that’s absolutely fine because we’ll go about our business quietly and we’re really happy with how we’ve performed over the last few weeks. We made huge progress in our free week and we’re building really well. Everyone can use different motivations – whether it’s what’s going on in my house or what people are reading in the media – this game will There will be advantages, this game will have certain advantages, and we are fully prepared.”
