Huw Jones can’t remember how many touches of the ball he got in the rain in Rome last Saturday, but he knows it wasn’t many.
He’s sure he had a few in the closing minutes – the 29 phases that ultimately amounted to nothing – but beyond that, the day passed him by.
A Scotland backline built to attack managed the grand total of zero line breaks against Italy – the only nation to draw a blank in this respect on the opening weekend and the first time in many, many years the Scotland attack was so hopelessly blunt.
Zero line breaks is an absolute rarity. Even in the Calcutta Cup monsoon in Edinburgh in 2020 Scotland managed three. The weather was a major factor in Rome, of course, but it didn’t stop Italy making six line breaks of their own. They found a way. Jones doesn’t hide from it. He can’t.
The Calcutta Cup, he says, is the “perfect game” now. Be careful what you wish for and all of that, but you get his point. A heaving Murrayfield, the Scots with their backs to the wall, England on a mighty roll, a shot at redemption. We’ve all seen this kind of ambush before.
Jones has played in seven Calcutta Cups, winning four, losing three while scoring six tries. It’s a fine record, but he concedes that the England coming to Edinburgh this weekend is possibly the strongest of all the England sides he has faced, including the one that did Scotland in cold blood at Twickenham in 2017. Jones scored two tries that day but England won 60-21.
“After a loss when everyone’s hurting and when we didn’t really get to play, we all have that pent-up frustration and energy,” says Jones.
“Even if we’d won I would have come away knowing I didn’t get to do anything. I’m really angry about that and this week adds to the fuel of just wanting to go out and show what we can do. It’s the perfect one for us to come back to.”
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