THE pressure is all on England. That appears to be the theme of the week within the Scotland camp as Saturday’s Calcutta Cup match approaches, with assistant coach Nathan Hines having got the ball rolling on Monday with his suggestion that Eddie Jones’ team might be paralysed by the fear of having their long unbeaten run ended.

Yesterday it was the turn of captain John Barclay to insist that, while Scotland’s supporters were optimistic as a result of the team’s wins over Ireland and Wales, the home side would go into the match at Twickenham bearing a far bigger burden of expectation. And, at the same time as gently turning up the heat on England, the Scarlets forward played down the magnitude of the occasion for his own squad, for all that they have a Triple Crown and a possible championship title to play for.

“Every time you play a Calcutta Cup match it gets blown up,” Barclay said. “The fact is we're playing a Six Nations which is five games long and we're on game four. They’re all big games and this is the next one.

"That’s maybe a slightly boring response, but that's the reality of it. You don't look at the following week, you look at England - they’re too good a side to look any further.

"Expectations are there, but we don't put any undue pressure on ourselves. We kind of feel like the expectations are more on England. They’ve gone how many games unbeaten? We've only won two games this Six Nations.

"We feel like there's not much pressure on us. We're playing some good stuff, which is maybe externally building a little bit of pressure. But within the group we’re not getting carried away. England are playing well. You don’t go that many games unbeaten” - the run now stands at 17 - “without playing well.”

Scotland may have ‘only’ won two games in the competition so far, but that is two more than has been often been the case before a trip to Twickenham. That fact, and the style with which the team has been playing, has encouraged some fans to believe that this, finally, could be the team’s first win in London since 1983, but Barclay believes that he and his team-mates cannot allow themselves to be distracted by history or statistics.

“It’s fantastic that we’re in the position where we’ve won a couple of games, but putting expectation on ourselves doesn’t actually achieve anything,” he said. “Playing England down there, the Calcutta Cup and their run are all things that happen externally.

“They’re all things that happen on the outside. Within the group we’ve just looked at England and how best we can prepare for the game.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic walking around with people being positive and saying nice things but I know how fast these things can change. We’ve won two games out of three, whereas England have won 17 in a row. The expectation is one thing, but if you’ve won 17 games in a row you’ve probably done more.”

Ross Ford, who is set to continue as understudy to Fraser Brown on Saturday, also insisted that the squad were not going to get caught up in the growing excitement about the match. “I’ve not really thought about it as a Calcutta Cup game,” the Edinburgh hooker said. “It’s just the next game in our progression. There hasn’t been that much mentioned about the Calcutta Cup, although it’s a good game to be involved in.”

Asked about the tactic by Italy that befuddled England in their last Six Nations game, Ford said he would have been ready for it, as Glasgow had tried it against Edinburgh a couple of years ago. By not throwing men into the tackle to make it a ruck, the Italians were able to stand around the ball rather than forming the usual defensive line further back - a ploy that led to calls for the laws to be joined to prevent the same thing happening again.

But Ford said there was nothing wrong with what the Italians had done, and that every team had to be prepared to cope with unusual tactics. “It’s not the first time we’ve seen it,” he added. “We had it done against us - Glasgow tried it a couple of years ago against Edinburgh, and it’s one of the things you deal with on the pitch. We dealt with it.

“It’s one of those things you have to be prepared for. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just a way of disrupting a team’s flow - but if you do it you leave yourself exposed in other ways.

“Maybe they were caught up in the flow of the game,” he continued when asked if he has surprised that England had taken so long to adjust. “They maybe got a bit flustered, but that’s something you have to deal with.”

Meanwhile, centre Duncan Taylor has been ruled out of Saturday's match after injuring a hamstring while playing for Saracens against Newcastle on Sunday. Scotland had hoped to involve Taylor at some point during the Championship, but he was just making his way back from a previous injury when the competition started last month. Glasgow centre Mark Bennett now seems sure to retain his place on the bench for both this match and the final game a week later against Italy, while Alex Dunbar and Huw Jones will remain the starting centre partnership.