Cotter sees Scots improvements
Brave, bruised but beaten again, Scotland coach Vern Cotter was left pondering what might have been after a hard-fought Calcutta Cup defeat at Twickenham.
Tries from Jonathan Joseph, George Ford and Jack Nowell secured England the 25-13 win but Scotland were certainly more than a match for the old enemy in sport's oldest international fixture.
They even took a narrow lead into halftime, following Mark Bennett's try, and frustrated their hosts and silenced their crowd, who greeted the final whistle with sighs of relief rather than fevered cheers.
But this was still Scotland's fourth consecutive defeat in this year's Championship, though it was a massive improvement on the loss to Italy at Murrayfield a fortnight ago.
"We played better than we did last time and we are moving in the right direction. I saw a lot of spirit and a lot of courage. I saw a good try taken but while I'd loved to have taken the Calcutta Cup home, we need to be patient and keep working on the things we need to improve, there are positives from the game.
"They are a very good team but we managed to contain them for large parts of the game," Cotter said.
Captain Greig Laidlaw admitted his team were a little stunned by England's flying start – especially as they've opened every match in recent weeks in rather lacklustre fashion.
But Laidlaw insisted he was proud with how his troops coped and rebounded – defying the predictions of those who expected a one-sided scoreline.
"Large parts of our performance were brilliant. The difference between this match and Italy was night and day. We needed to turn up at the end of the game and England put the squeeze on us in the second half.
"England came springing out the traps and maybe we had a hangover from the Italian game but the response was fantastic and we settled and grew into the match.
"We took the game to England and moved the ball well and made it very hard for them. We just couldn't get the field position to replicate that in the second half," Laidlaw stated.
