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'Twickenham is nice. You don't get people spitting on you'
By Chris Jones
Eddie Jones has painful personal memories of last season’s Calcutta Cup disaster and is promising to repay Scotland with a intensely hostile welcome at Twickenham on Saturday.
Jones remembers the pre-match tunnel bust up initiated by Ryan Wilsons’s intimidation of George Ford, the wild celebrations and comments by the Scottish players after their 25-13 victory and the personal abuse the England head coach suffered from rival fans at Manchester station the following day.
As a result, Jones has been quick to stoke the fires ahead of the final round of Six Nations matches which could see England champions if Wales lose to Ireland and his men register a bonus point win.
Jones said:"I think they have a healthy dislike of the English and we would certainly like to reciprocate the welcome we got up there last year. Twickenham is all leather patches, brogue shoes - it's nice. You don't get people telling you where to go, you don't get people spitting on you, you don't get people grabbing you round the head and telling you what you should do. So we'll make sure the hostility is on the field.
“We saw how they carried on last year after they beat us. I remember everything that was said.”
Scrum half Ali Price admits injury ravaged Scotland are vulnerable but they won’t be merely making up the numbers against a fired up England.
The Scots are holding a medical assessment after their back three of Blair Kinghorn, Tommy Seymour and Darcy Graham were all forced off during the 18-11 loss to Wales. Head coach Gregor Townsend has been robbed of John Barclay, WP Nel, Hamish Watson, Ryan Wilson, Finn Russell, Huw Jones and Stuart Hogg during the Six Nations and now heads to Twickenham were the Scots have not won for 36 years.
Price is adamant the Scots are ready for the challenge despite just one win in the Championship and told the BBC; "We can't go down there thinking, 'this is the last game so let's just get it out the way'. That's a shocking mentality. We can't go down there feeling sorry for ourselves and let them take advantage of our vulnerability.
"People will say we've got nothing to play for - but we've got pride to play for, Scotland to play for. We want to put our all in and come away with a win."
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Look there are a few unarguable facts here that are very clear. SARU was close to bankruptcy with SR, bailed out by the Lions and they need the URC and EPCR. Inclusion of SA teams in URC has been a great for for ALL concerned, from a rugby perspective and financially, moreover there is massive growth yet to come. The GP is in financial trouble and this will be the catalyst for EPCR change to further cement the Boks.
If this all plays out with even greater rewards for the urc AND the Top14 & GP via EPCR, the 6N will become 7N. Nz and Aus NEED to get their version firing with Japan & the PI’s, otherwise they will find themselves increasingly regressing…
Go to commentsPerofeta came back and was available for the eoyt right? Or was that why Love was in the squad (but got injured in the last week)?
It was such a frustrating year. Perofeta looked a service stop gap until Jordan was fit, but then got injured. Plummer was selected because of Pero's injury and dmac shat the bed in the second half in Australia but Clarke (?) got himself binned at the 65 min mark so Plummer couldn't come on (at least with the risk adverse Razors thinking) when he was planned to.
So many other exciting opportunities that could have happened without injuries, but then theyre probably balanced by knowing Sititi probably wouldn't have been given a chance without multiple injuries happened.
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