Preview: Scotland V England

CARDIFF, WALES - FEBRUARY 03: Scotland's Finn Russell, Jamie RItchie and Pierre Schoeman during the national anthem during a Guinness Six Nations match between Wales and Scotland at the Principality Stadium, on February 03, 2024, in Cardiff, Wales. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

What they said

Scotland Head Coach Gregor Townsend said: 

“There’s lots of positive energy in the camp around us playing at home against our biggest rival, but also on the fact that we should’ve won against France. Not just because of the decision at the end which we were frustrated with, but also because of the pressure we created which should’ve put France away. We’ve got to make sure we’re better for that experience and that we deliver a winning performance this weekend.

“It’s important to have back-to-back home games, it makes everything flow much  better. The energy we get in any game at home is tremendous, but for this one it’s something special so we won’t need to build the emotional side up too much. It’s about sticking together, staying calm and riding on the wave of energy that the supporters are going to bring”.

The Teams

The stats

• Scotland have won each of their last three Guinness Men’s Six Nations matches against England, as many victories as they’d managed in their previous 20 such attempts (D2, L15).
• Scotland have made more kicks in play (82) than any other side in the 2024 Guinness Men’s Six Nations so far, with Finn Russell making 44 of those, 15 more than any other player, for a total kicking metres tally of 1584m, over 600m more than anyone else and just 26m shy of a mile.
• Finn Russell is the joint top points scorer in the 2024 Guinness Men’s Six Nations so far, alongside George Ford (both 23 points), Russell has a 100% goalkicking rate having knocked over all nine of his kicks at goal (Ford 8/11, 73%), based on the difficulty of those kicks (xGK) the Scot has scored 2.1 points more than expected, whilst Ford has scored 1.6 points fewer.