Finding a way to win away. It was a conundrum that ensured Gregor Townsend did not get carried away last Saturday by Scotland’s first victory over England in 10 years. The head coach was already thinking about their next match against Ireland in Dublin and how to end years of failure on the road in the tournament.
Scotland’s last away victory to one of their old Five Nations rivals was in Dublin in 2010. For many Six Nations campaigns they were little better at Murrayfield, but in the last two years they have defeated Ireland, Wales, France and now England in front of their own supporters.
A few pages have been turned but Townsend is now on a new chapter. For all the elation at Murrayfield last weekend, it was only a few weeks ago that he was reflecting on a day in Cardiff that had promised so much and delivered so little.
Factor out Italy, whose last victory in the tournament in Rome was in 2013, and home advantage has become significant in the Six Nations. Coaches, when they are preparing for away matches, talk about the venue they will be travelling to as another strip of grass and how players are able to blot out the crowd, but Scotland fed off the emotion of their supporters, starting in the tunnel after the warmup.
Last year’s Six Nations was decided not by the bonus points system but England’s late victory in Cardiff; other than Italy, Wales were the only side to lose at home. This year, Ireland’s even later plundering of the points in Paris has put them in a position where they could secure the title with one round to go.
The England head coach, Eddie Jones, said before the Scotland game that England had had two “very good” training weeks and that they were becoming a robust, mentally tough team that was not fazed by hostile environments. “You don’t hear Manchester City talk about playing away from home,” he pointed out.
England failed to strip the emotion out of the occasion and conceded three tries in the opening half. A concern for Jones was their failure to solve problems before receiving advice from the coaches during the interval. They had talked in the buildup about the importance of the breakdown but were lacking in that area.
It was a day when the wisdom of playing Chris Robshaw on the openside, which Jones questioned during the 2015 World Cup, was thrown back at him, never mind that the Harlequin saved a potential try in the first half with a turnover near his line. It was a system, rather than individual, failure, with England failing to adapt to the way the referee, Nigel Owens, controlled the breakdown.
Owens is a Pro14 referee, a tournament in which a longer contest for possession is allowed than in the Premiership where the team taking the ball into contact will be allowed to recycle it unless the ball-carrier is isolated and forced to hold on. Opensides such as Justin Tipuric, Hamish Watson, Dan Leavy and James Davies are of greater value in the Pro14 than they would be in England because games break up more and their roles are more traditional.
The breakdown was refereed far differently in Dublin last weekend where New Zealand’s Glen Jackson, who spent much of his senior career in England with Saracens, gave the defending side little latitude. Ireland had prepared for him, coming in at the side to either seal off or take away the legs of the Wales player contesting for possession, and it was Wales who gave away the penalties.
Three out of four teams had to deal with unfamiliar refereeing interpretations but only one did so successfully. It raises the question why there is not more cross-pollination of officials between the three major leagues in Europe rather than only the two European tournaments. While the system of elite referees is meant to spread consistency, they are all conditioned by where they hail from, and in the southern hemisphere and the Pro14 there is more emphasis on entertainment than in the Premiership or Top 14.
What was less of a surprise than Scotland’s victory, given their notable improvement at Murrayfield in the last couple of years, was the general reaction to England’s defeat. When the All Blacks lost to Ireland in 2016 the focus was on the victors but after Murrayfield, with a few doffs to Finn Russell and Huw Jones, it was as if England had been kicked out of the World Cup; goodbye to Mike Brown, Dylan Hartley and all that.
It will be about England’s response in Paris against a France side that ended a long winless streak against Italy, in Marseille, comfortably rather than convincingly. The loss of Billy Vunipola leaves a hole no one can fill, just as the series of injuries to Manu Tuilagi have denied Jones the chance to mould him into an inside-centre.
England have not been knocked off course, just given a jolt in a Six Nations championship that has never been more competitive with Scotland abandoning the wooden spoon pursuit. France may be playing catchup in terms of squad organisation but they take some beating. It has been a fascinating tournament and it still has a way to go.
• This is an extract taken from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions, or sign up below.