THE mind games started early for the RBS 6 Nations tournament when all sorts of psychology was tried out at the official launch of the 2016 championship in London yesterday.
Scotland’s Six Nations captain Greig Laidlaw is clearly using the national side’s painful loss to Australia in the World Cup quarter-finals last October as a mental spur, saying he believes he can be the first Scotsman to lift the “Six” trophy.
No Scottish rugby fan will need reminding of how Laidlaw pleaded with referee Craig Joubert to consult the television match official after he awarded Australia a controversial late penalty that Bernard Foley scored for a 35-34 win.
Laidlaw said: “I’ll take that to my grave with me and I say that truthfully. It’s something that as players we know could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“It’s a career where things turn on small margins. You put your life’s work into stuff and for it to end like that is difficult to take.
“But we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We don’t deserve anything. Nobody is going to give us anything easy. Nobody is going to feel sorry for us in the Six Nations, and we are not going to feel sorry for ourselves.
“We have to improve, get better and win games of rugby.”
Improvement is needed, as Scotland have won just three games in the past four years, and have lost their last seven matches on the trot including all five last year.
The World Cup saw a vast improvement but surely not enough to justify England coach Eddie Jones’s mind games in saying that Scotland start as favourites in the Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield a week on Saturday. Jones said: “We’ve only had six training sessions together so there is an enormous pressure on Scotland to perform and not so much on us. The bookies might have us as favourites but Scotland have to be.”
Scotland coach Vern Cotter probably doesn’t understand the Scottish phrase “aye, right” but he wasn’t buying it from Jones, and made a telling psychological point of his own about England’s “style” of play.
Cotter insisted that England boasting five sides in the European Champ-ions Cup quarter-final, hinted at a resurgence in form.
He said: “As much as they clearly go into this fixture as the preferred team we just want to make Murrayfield not a particularly nice place for them.
“We’ll do our damnedest to make sure he has no comfortable day, we’ll be rolling our sleeves up and giving it our best shot.
“Eddie Jones’ record speaks for itself, he’s a good coach. He prepared his Japanese team very well for the World Cup.
“We know that England will be going back to basics for them, which is a big, hard aggressive forward pack and dominating set-piece.
“A lot of energy is coming from the players in the Champions Cup, and Eddie will be channelling all of that desire to do well and perform better than they did in the World Cup.”
In what might be another sally at mind games, Laidlaw said Scotland wouldn’t “go looking” to target new England captain Dylan Hartley, who has lost 54 weeks of his career to suspension.
Asked if Scotland would seek to antagonise Hartley, Laidlaw said: “Time will tell. No one knows what will happen in the game.
“We’ve got to look inside ourselves, concentrate on ourselves and not worry about anyone else ultimately. It’s as simple as that.
“It’s going to be an incredible atmosphere, I think the stadium sold out in record time and it’s great as Scottish players for us to see that, to feel the support of the nation getting behind us – but that only goes so far.
“In terms of England coming up here, Dylan’s an experienced guy, he’s been around a while and he’ll deal with that.
“But it will be a tough environment – we want to make Murrayfield a place where teams don’t like coming.
“A lot of it will be down to our performance.”
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