‘We can beat anyone,’ says John Barclay as Scotland eye England scalp

The 10-year wait is over and the relief was fairly oozing from Vern Cotter’s every pore. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it,” he said after Scotland’s sparkling 29-13 win over Wales at Murrayfield, their first since 2007.

“I’m really happy for a number of reasons. We set out to win the game and at half-time we weren’t particularly well positioned to do so, but the players adjusted well and scored a couple of nice tries. It was a good second-half performance. We needed to tweak a couple of things and the boys did it really well. We realised that we were probably watching them play, rather than playing ourselves.

“Then we decided to influence the outcome – and it wasn’t just me talking. Everybody was. I’m very proud of that response. We started taking the game to the Welsh. Hats off to the players. I thought they put on a great performance.”

Thus buoyed by an ever-growing confidence, Scotland move on now to the toughest assignment yet. In a fortnight’s time they take on England at Twickenham. And if they think it was a long time since they had beaten the Welsh, it must seem an eternity since they won down there – 34 years, to be precise. Or, to put it another way, before any of the players were born.

“If we’re on a roll, we’ll take it!” Cotter said of the prospect of going to Twickenham without any fear. “That’s a joke, obviously. We know how hard Twickenham is. These experiences for these young players are great. John [Barclay, captain in the absence of Greig Laidlaw] has done a great job steadying the ship. You can see some of the skill sets that have been worked on coming off. But that may be the record [equalling] game for England, so there’ll be a lot of things to play for. There’s a number of reasons why we need to get up and prepare well for that game.”

It was Barclay who drew the biggest cheers around Murrayfield during the post-match interviews, when he was asked if Scotland would beat England when the sides meet for the Calcutta Cup on 11 March.

“We’ll have a look at them,” he said, smiling. “We can mix it with anyone. I’m not going to make any big predictions.

“We have beaten Ireland, who are a very good team, and we have beaten Wales, who are a very good team. We believe we can beat anyone.”

If Scotland are to retain hopes of winning the title, they will need to overturn that hoodoo, which still seems a long shot from this distance, given England’s power. But with a home fixture against Italy in the last round, there is every chance they will finish with three wins, which will equal their best performance in the Six Nations. Already, though, this feels their best championship since that end-of-a-century party in 1999.

The novelty value of just remaining in contention this deep into proceedings was noticeably invigorating. What a contrast was cut by Rob Howley and Alun Wyn Jones, Wales’s coach and captain respectively. For Wales, hopes of another Six Nations title are all but over.

It had seemed they were in the ascendancy in the first half, their greater power at close quarters trumping Scotland’s brio with ball in hand, but they started to lose even the physical edge as the second half unwound and Scotland pulled them this way and that.

Howley admitted he was “hugely disappointed” to have lost a game his side had led at half time. “Our second-half performance wasn’t good enough,” he said. “Scotland squeezed us. We lacked possession and when we got it, Scotland were hugely effective in the contact area. Our changing room was positive at half-time, but that didn’t manifest in the second half.

“Losing today, our championship is over, but it’s about pride in the next two games. Scotland were better than us and deserved the win.”