Chloe Reynolds
England and Scotland have a rivalry that is as old as time, especially when it comes to rugby.
Scotland managed to beat England to win a fourth consecutive Calcutta Cup – the trophy awarded to the winner of the match between England and Scotland played annually in the Six Nations Championship – in a ramped-up Murrayfield. The 128 year wait for the consecutive wins was worth it for the Scots. Duhan van der Merwe managed to secure three tries and Finn Russel secured all three conversions, along with three penalty kicks.
FIRST HALF
It was England that got on the scoreboard first thanks to a George Furbank try. This came off the back of a scrum where Danny Care passed to Elliot Daly and the ball got to Furbank who managed to slip through the gap and score his first try for England. George Ford scored the conversion making it 0-7 to England in the first 5 minuets.
The game was momentarily stopped when Zander Fagerson had to exit the field for a head injury assessment, and Ford clipped a penalty putting the visitors to 10.
Duhan van der Merwe brought the whole crowd along for the the ride and the noise in Murrayfield cannot be described as he held onto the ball in a ruck.
Huw Jones passed to Van der Merwe, who finished it into the right hand to secure his 24th Scotland try.
A skewed ball by Ford towards Furbank landed in the arms of Jones who passes to Van der Merwe to put the ball down for another try.
Ethan Roots gave away a needless offside penalty which Russell converted before Ford calmly stemmed the Scottish tide.
As the whistle blew for half time, the score stood at Scotland 17- 13 England.
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SECOND HALF
Scotland went close to a try early into the second half. Sam Underhill forced a penalty and Van Der Merwe scored an impressive third try the first hat trick of his career.
Russell then ran out wide before bouncing the ball that fell perfectly to Van Der Merwe who now had a sensational 26 tries with 37 caps and Russell made the conversion with ease.
England weren’t going to go down without a fight though. After Ford added a penalty, making Scotland only eight points ahead.
Elliot Millar Mills became a permanent substitution for Zander Fagerson, who was unable to continue after his head injury in the first half, and very easily showed his experience in winning a penalty turnover. Russell continued with his perfect record from the tee for the conversion.
England showed their class with 14 seconds left on the clock when Immanuel Feyi-Waboso took a short ball from Ben Spencer to take home. Fin Smiths conversion hit the post, which the Scotland supporters cheered for.
Van der Merwe was deservedly named player of the match.
As the final whistle blew, the score came out as Scotland 30-21 England.
REACTION
England Captain Jamie George said to the BBC after the game: “We really made it hard for ourselves today. In the first 20 minutes, we probably played the best we have for a while, but then Duhan showed us his world class ability and when you give a team like Scotland 14 points it’s going to be difficult.
“We spoke about having a first start. I don’t see many issues with how we played in the first half, a few loose balls. But again, if you give the ball to Finn Russell and Duhan they can create magic and they did that. A lot of what we did was good and the endeavour we showed. But we just cannot hand the ball over to a team like that.”
Scotland Head Coach Gregor Townsend was pleased with this result as he said: “It’s great we got the win. To score 30 points in this fixture shows what this team is capable of. I thought the bench did really well, but I still felt there were missed opportunities in the final 20 minutes.
“’I’m so proud of the effort. To deny England a bonus point was also good too. There is more we have to bring out in the next two fixtures, [which will be] very tough away games, but we’ll go to Italy with confidence.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
Super Saturday is upon us.
England travel to France to play at Groupama Stadium in Lyon on Saturday the 16th March at 8pm.
Scotland play neighbours Ireland at Aviva Stadium in Dublin on the 16th March at 2:15pm.
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Featured image courtesy of Hanson Lu on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
