Tired of this narrative: 47-cap Scotland man on why England win can't be a one-off

It’s been a campaign of extremes for Gregor Townsend’s squad and we’re only into week three. The defeat by Italy on the opening weekend cranked up the pressure going into the Calcutta Cup but the Scots responded spectacularly at Murrayfield, comprehensively outplaying England who came north on a run of 12 consecutive victories.

The challenge, according to Cummings, is to prove that it was not a one-off and the 47-cap Scotland lock rubbished the notion that the England result took the pressure off.

“I wouldn't say so,” he said. “And I don't want it to, I want the heat on us. I think we're a team that might be going in as a strong, confident team but we need to view every single moment as the most important moment of the match and if we don't then I don't think we'll get the win out of it.”

Scotland’s capacity for taking their supporters on an emotional rollercoaster has been encapsulated in this season’s Six Nations and Cummings knows the team have been guilty in the past of failing to follow up England victories with another win. On the last seven occasions Scotland have won the Calcutta Cup they have lost their next game six times.

“We'll obviously be sitting there with Italy in the back of our mind and we know that we can't let our performance dip to that point again,” he said.

Easy to get up for England

“We know that we can push on and we believe we can push on. The weekend was just a start for us, it's now we need to back it up. We've beaten England before, we've done this before in the Six Nations quite a few times, and we probably haven't backed it up after that, so that's definitely a big focus for us.

“Obviously, games like a big England game, it's easy to get up emotionally for that but we've talked about how we can't let that be a one-off. We're tired of that being our narrative. We want to set our own story and definitely want to push on and not let that just be another one of the stats.”

One of the many positives from the England win was the lineout performance. It had gone badly wrong against Italy but Scotland kept it simple in the Calcutta Cup and got the rewards. In Cardiff, they will be up against a Wales team whose lineout guru is Danny Wilson, the former Scotland assistant and Glasgow Warriors head coach.

“I think the Italy game was an outlier for us,” said Cummings. “We are quite a strong lineout team as a whole. We lost a couple early on in that Italy game and then obviously the heavens opened and it was against a really good Italian lineout defence. I thought they were incredible that day.

“We obviously had a much better game against England but we're not now thinking that we've made it. The lineout is still a massive focus point for us. This weekend, we're against Wales, we're up against someone like Danny Wilson who's been our lineout coach before.

“It's obviously going to be a massive challenge for us again. We definitely won't be resting thinking that we've made it now.”

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