Ben Earl has praised England‘s improved ability to bounce back from pressure situations which he feels will stand them in good stead to end a three-match losing streak against Scotland.
Earl, 26, made his test debut in England’s last victory against Scotland in 2020 – their only win against their northern neighbours in the last six meetings between the two sides.
England’s three defeats in the space of two years between 2021 and 2023 came after they lost the same number of times to their Calcutta Cup opponents in the 20 years preceding that.
And Earl is determined to put things right for his nation as England look to keep their winning start to the Six Nations alive at Murrayfield next Saturday.
“Scotland are a very proud rugby nation, they’ve got some great players, some great individuals,” Earl said.
“We’ve never had an easy game against them and last time we played them at Twickenham, the first game of last year, we lost.
“We’ve got to right some wrongs and so we’re really looking forward to going up there.”
Though England have failed to fire in anything like the same way as Championship leaders Ireland, who have also won their first two games after dismantling both France and Italy, they have shown an impressive resilience to recover from half-time deficits against both the Azzurri and Wales.
In both matches England have come from nine points behind to win with the game last Saturday seeing them overturn a record losing margin at the break to earn their victory.
Earl feels that’s a sign of England’s progress after the national team had begun to build a reputation for surrendering big leads and collapsing after going behind early on, habits that defined many of their lows in the previous seven years.
“We feel we’ve got a good game to fall back on when things are tight. We can squeeze games out and find a way to win. We know we can win from almost any position,” Earl said.
“When our backs were against the wall against Wales, we got together and said ‘look, it feels like we’re not getting the rub of the green here from the ref and/or the context of the game, so we need to almost bunker down or come out swinging in a way’.
“Other England teams in previous regimes, we might have gone into our shells and reverted to an individual focus, but we were collected and aligned in our messaging and in our next actions, so we were really pleased.
“The Italy game was a step in the right direction and Wales was another step in the right direction, so who knows where we can take it.”
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