Two weeks ago England beat France 26-25 with four tries for their first win over top opposition in 10 months and eight attempts.
If the beauty of rugby is that two such different contests can end up in a one-point win for the same team, the appeal will be lost on the Scots, who play some of the prettiest rugby on the planet, but lose more often than they win, especially when titles are on the line.
England finally break Scotland hoodoo with first Twickenham win for eight years
Read MoreEngland’s answers to Scotland’s questions generally comprised a lot of huffing and puffing and tackling and kicking, and the kicking did not work, and those who buy the most expensive seats in the sport were hacked off by it.
The crowd wanted the ball in the home side’s hands more often and so too, it turned out, did the England head coach, Steve Borthwick.
The Smith ploy was extra questionable as he was targeting the giant Scotland back-three pair of Blair Kinghorn and Duhan van der Merwe, two men well capable of dealing with the high ball, although the reasoning may have been for England’s own back three of Freeman, Ollie Sleightholme and Marcus Smith to swoop on the scraps of an aerial contest. If so, it didn’t work.
Mitchell’s box-kicking drew boos from the stands (Photo: Getty)It created an archetypal arm-wrestle in the central areas and was almost entirely different to the looseness permitted by the French when Smith made his first England start a fortnight ago.
When England did bring off a flashy move, and Ollie Lawrence made a line-break and Marcus Smith charged onto his shoulder, they managed to butcher it, as Lawrence’s overegged flipped pass on the Scotland line flew into touch.
All in all, a hugely disappointing effort in attack, or as Itoje put it: “We need to find ways to spend more time there [in the opponents’ half].”
England have the two weakest teams in the Six Nations still to play – Italy here and Wales in Cardiff – and a chance of the title if Ireland slip up against France in Dublin or the Italians in Rome, or at least of a first top-two finish in the competition since 2020.
But the season-long perception of England is unchanged, and maybe it will take much than a season to do it.
They are a team who recently lost a chunk of players to retirement and French clubs, they are not quite in the game’s top rank, and their way to success on this occasion was to “run hard for each other”, as Borthwick put it, and half-pray and half-plan to see the scoreboard at the end of 80 minutes in their favour.
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