'Growth': Scotland urged to back up England win as squad heads to Spain

Having bounced back from last week’s miserable defeat in Italy but ending Steve Borthwick’s side’s 12-game winning streak, Scotland now lead the standings.

The bonus-point 31-20 win at Murrayfield means they have six points, one more than England, ahead of the Sunday game between Wales and France, the odd-on championship favourites.

Tuipulotu seemed surprised to hear that Scotland were top of the table and said it was too early to be thinking of the standings.

“Leading Scotland is a massive pleasure of mine, probably the biggest pleasure of my career, probably even over playing for the Lions, just leading a team like this,” said the skipper. “And I've been on this journey now for four or five years with this team. We've been near the lowest of lows. And I take the last week as a low moment for myself. But I've also had some massive highs and this is one of them.

“I really want this to be the growth now. The way for us to show our growth next week is to back up this performance, in a stadium that's not been without troubles for us over the last 20 years.

“You can sense it when a moment changes, a feeling inside a change room. And I can't tell you how happy I am for the group to feel the feeling that I'm feeling now because I really do feel that that is a performance that can change a lot.”

Spanish trip for Scotland

The squad will prepare for the Wales game by going to Spain for a training camp and Tuipulotu demanded the same focus.

“My message to the group has been the same since the start of the Six Nations, to not look at the table and to not look at the outside noise,” added the centre. “That's one of the challenging parts of the Six Nations; it's such a big tournament that there's so much media that comes with it. There's so much excitement from the outside of the change room. It's important just to keep the excitement in the changing room and focus on the next game that we have.

“We'll go to Spain now to prepare well for this Wales team that's well coached, as we know, and give them all the respect in the world, because we can back up this performance.”

Scotland began the game at a ferocious pace and tries from Huw Jones and Jamie Ritchie, both converted by Finn Russell who also landed an early penalty, had the home side 17-0 ahead after 15 minutes. Henry Arundell, who received two yellow cards, brought England back into it with a converted try before Ben White scored Scotland’s third to make the half-time lead 24-10.

Jones scored a stunning fourth try for Scotland in the second half and a late counter from Ben Earl was a mere consolation.

It was Scotland’s fifth win in their last six games against England and was in stark contrast to last weekend’s Six Nations opener when they lost 18-15 in a downpour in Rome. Tuipulotu admitted he was concerned about the impact the loss to Italy might have had on the squad.

“I'm really proud of the group,” he said. “I feared what the Italy game would do to us as a group, a little bit directly after it. I can't remember hurting like that after a game. It took probably longer than other games took for me just because I thought we had turned the corner after Argentina, but there were some things that we couldn't get out there against Italy because of the conditions and everything.

“And also credit to Italy, they were better than us on the day. But for us to regather and internalise everything and not let the noise affect us as a group, I just want to credit everyone inside the building for the work that we put in this week to get a performance like that.

“I never lost belief in the group, because I had seen how we trained two weeks prior to the Italy game. And something felt a little bit different for me. For us to pick ourselves up again after Italy and then deliver the performance we did, I'm just super proud of the coaching staff and the group for staying on task.

“Like I said here on Friday, it's not easy to be in that changing room and not get the results and feel defeated at times. But we weren't defeated. We got up and we went again and that's what I'm most proud about the group.”

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