HUW Jones again showed the attacking verve he has become known for yesterday as he ran in two tries against England. The contrast between this performance and his scores in his previous half-dozen Tests was the fact that these tries mattered not a jot, being reduced to no more than a detail as England romped to a 61-21 triumph.

“Two tries is small consolation,” the centre said after a match in which the English attack got the better of him and his colleagues time after time. “We just weren’t good enough.

“We let ourselves down in the first half with a couple of defensive errors. We let through some soft tries and it was tough to come back from that. I don’t think they did anything different from what we expected - we just made stupid mistakes.

“It was a huge disappointment. We came into this game with high hopes and we should be able to do a job and at least compete better than that, so we really let ourselves down.”

While Jamie Joseph sliced Scotland open in the first half, Jones felt the defence was more well organised after the break, for all that England scored more tries in the second 40. “We looked at it in the changing room at half-time and I think we corrected it then,” he said. “But we should have had those small conversations on the pitch during the first half and fixed it. It’s our fault and we have to work on it.

“Obviously it’s a massive disappointment. We’ve fallen short and really let ourselves down with that performance, but I think the strength and character within this group is enough that we can bounce back and hopefully have a good result next week.

“You have these losses a lot in sport. We’ve all had these losses growing up and this is obviously on a bigger stage. So we’ll know how to come back from this. Obviously review it and then put it behind us.”

Scotland captain John Barclay emphasised that theme. With a match against Italy coming up at Murrayfield on Saturday, Scotland have no time in which to indulge in self-pity. No matter how bitter this defeat, no matter the scale of the shortcomings shown up by England, Vern Cotter’s side still have a chance of recording their best Championship finish in over a decade.

If they beat Italy to add to their previous home wins over Ireland and Wales, they will have won three matches in the tournament for the first time since 2006, and Barclay is sure they have the character to recover in time to do so. “It’ll be a test of character,” the captain said. “But this is a good group of men – we’re not kids, and no-one is going to shirk responsibility.

“There’ll be some hard truths, but we have to dust ourselves down. It’s pretty dark at the moment, but we get to finish with Italy at a sold-out Murrayfield and still have the possibility of finishing second. So there’s a lot to play for, but we also have to learn some lessons.”

One of those lessons will be about the need to preserve self-discipline. Fraser Brown’s second-minute sinbinning was the most blatant offence, but others were costly too as England centre Owen Farrell was on target with five out of six of his penalty attempts as well as converting all of his team’s tries.

“On quite a few occasions there were penalties that we can avoid and we need to have a close look at that and make sure we play differently next time,” Cotter said.

“As soon as we got fast ball and got a few things in place we made ground. The frustration comes from the fact that if we’d had more ball and not given away field position and given them lineouts from penalties then perhaps the game might have been different. But that’s the way it unfolded today and we’ll just take it on the chin and move on.”