Scotland hooker George Turner wants to build on their confidence boosting start to the Six Nations as they look to prove they are a serious outfit.
Gregor Townsend’s men had developed a reputation for blowing hot and cold in the Championship after winning in week one but then losing in Round Two.
But finally they put that two-year hoodoo to bed last Saturday as they comfortably beat Wales 35-7 on the back of their Calcutta Cup victory over England.
Backed up their opening victory
“The last couple of years we’ve been talking about a special group of players and we’ve had great wins over England in the opening games then slipped against Wales home and away having been confident going into both those games,” said Turner.
“We talked after the England game about how we’d had a good win but that we’d made a lot of mistakes and knew we had a lot to improve.
“We were all ecstatic that we’d won against England but everyone just automatically rolled into the next week and was like ‘we know we’ve lost to Wales a few times, we need to focus’.”
Now in the Six Nations‘ fallow week, Scotland will look to regroup before going again when they face France a week on Sunday, a task that excites Turner.
“It’s a great feeling in camp, a great group of boys,” he said.
“But even now, although we played well for a lot of that game against Wales, the main thing is that we’re now really wanting to build on that and take it further.
“The next game is about really fine-tuning and having a proper good performance. We’ve got things to work on and get better at. We’re obviously confident and we want to back up these wins again but we won’t take France lightly. We want to win there again.”
Turner crossed for the first of Scotland’s five tries over the weekend but he admitted it was only after a TMO review that he knew he’d dotted the ball down.
“I didn’t know I’d scored until I looked up at the replay,” he said. “I got a bit lucky. They nearly held me up but I just touched a blade of grass!”
Try followed by a sin-binning
However, it wasn’t a perfect afternoon for the hooker as he was sin-binned soon after, but credited his team for how they adapted to being down to 14 men.
“I was absolutely gutted,” he said about the card. “I can see why it was a yellow card. But we have plans, we replicate in training things that can happen.
“Actually, we replicated last week what we might do if I got a yellow card so that was good foresight, maybe. The boys adapted to it, spread a bit more and did a good job.
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“It was a wee momentum shift. They got a few calls and they nearly scored in the corner right at the end of the half. If we’d let them in, we would maybe have dropped our heads but to keep them out at that point was a really big thing.”