Robbie Nairn says that the Scotland Under-20 team should draw confidence from having beaten their England counterparts for the first time ever during last year’s Six Nations, as they prepare to take on the red rose brigade at Franklin Gardens in Northampton tonight (kick-off: 6.15pm).
Nairn and fellow winger Darcy Graham are the only survivors from the starting XV for that match still in the Scotland set-up, while tight-head prop Adam Nicol and back-up scrum-half were among the replacements when the young Scots ran in four tries in the process of recording a 24-6 win over their great rivals at Broadwood Stadium just over thirteen months ago.
But Nairn believes that the experience can still have an energising effect on the young Scots as they look to kick start their season after three defeats from their first three matches.
“We’ve got a lot of respect for England, they put nearly 40 points on Wales [who then scored 65 points against Scotland] so we’ve got to respect that – but we turned them over last year in the Six Nations and there was a lot of talk about that team being really strong, so we’re just going to focus on ourselves,” said the powerful winger, who is a member of the academy set-up at Harlequins based in London.
Nairn has been recalled to the starting line-up after making a big impact off the bench with some powerful carries and a couple of late tries in that defeat against Wales.
“Personally, I was quite happy but I wasn’t in a good mood after the game. I’m a bit of a sore loser and I found that one hard to take. We had to take a long hard look at ourselves afterwards and we’ve learnt a lot about ourselves as a team since then. We’ve not got time to sit and feel sorry for ourselves because we’ve got England coming and that’s got to be the focus,” said the former Currie wide-man.
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