We all know how Saturday is going to turn out.
England will win and, barring a sensation, they’ll win extremely comfortably. Frankly, Scotland will do well to keep England to 40 points, as they did at the World Cup last autumn.
In the seven meetings before that, England’s points totals against Scotland were 59, 46, 58, 57, 52, 53 and 80.
Against Ireland last weekend, the world champions were missing a raft of players and didn’t deliver anything like their best stuff, but they still won 33-12.
Only seven of their World Cup starters are starting at Murrayfield and only 12 of their famous 23 are involved. Will it make much difference? Not likely. Not when the ones who are coming in are so impressive.
England have won 34 Tests in a row and are looking for their eighth straight Six Nations title.
When it’s England you’re playing you learn about the beauty of little victories – the number of chances you can create and finish, the amount of time you can keep them scoreless, the strength of your set-piece and the resilience of your mind as the white waves start to crash in on you.
It’s not about the pursuit of victory – let’s be honest – it’s about how many shots you can fire. Against England, the answer is usually ‘not many’. In their seven Six Nations titles on the spin only France have troubled them unduly – losing by one point last season, by five in 2023 and by six in 2020.
Across the span of those Six Nations seasons the closest any other country has come, before last weekend, was Ireland in 2020 – when they lost by 27 points. As in, 27-0. Ireland’s 21-point defeat at Twickenham in round one of this season’s championship now stands as the best of the rest.
So for Scotland it’s about performance, about how they stay in the fight, how the older players lead and how the younger players learn, how they fix some of the issues they had in victory against Wales – the lineout, especially.
Head coach Sione Fukofuka talked on Thursday about using the energy of the crowd on Saturday.
He also brought it back home a little when he said, charmingly, that his four young sons back home in Brisbane tried to stay up to watch the game from the Principality, with a 01:40 kick-off time in Australia.
Two conked out, one put in a gallant effort but was a casualty early on and one made it through. This game starts at 22:30 in Brisbane so the numbers might be higher this time.
“I’m not going to lie, there’s an edge, absolutely,” Fukofuka said. “Last week there was a slightly different prep in terms of the emotional rivalry that exists between Wales and Scotland.
“This one, the edge is around performance. The pressure’s on England. There’s an expectation on them to win every game.”
Malcolm says her team is ready to embrace the biggest challenge around. “It’s about being the best Scotland team that we can possibly be,” she says.
“Last week we tripped up in different areas and Saturday is about taking opportunities when we get them.
“We know what we’re faced with, we’re not going to have the same number of opportunities that we had last week. It’s important that when we have them we’re accurate. We need to be brave, we can’t play within ourselves.”
A record home crowd against the best team in the world – a stage they could only have dreamed about, an occasion to live long in the memory.
