Ollie Lawrence is racing against time to solve England’s Calcutta Cup conundrum – how to stop Finn Russell.
England centre Lawrence and Scotland fly-half Russell are team-mates at Bath but are set to face off at Twickenham in round three of the Six Nations a week on Saturday.
Russell inspired Bath to the Premiership final last year and Lawrence was alongside him in midfield most weeks.
But the 25-year-old admits he is still searching for a masterplan to stop Scotland’s maverick 10 who runs everything they do in attack.
Lawrence said: “I do know him pretty well, and I probably don’t have the answer for that one yet. He’s another exceptional talent. I don’t think going after him on your own – it’s kind of similar to the French with Antoine Dupont – if you go after him, you create holes elsewhere.
“So, it’s about being aligned as a team, being defensively aligned, then off the back of that, putting pressure on them. They have to make tough decisions, sometimes it’ll work for them, as they’re both great players, but hopefully we can put pressure on him and shut him down as much as we can.”
Russell is expected to be fit after going off after 21 minutes of Scotland’s 32-18 defeat by Ireland. The fly-half passed his head injury assessment but was kept off by the Scottish medical staff.
Wing Darcy Graham took a more serious knock in a clash of heads with Russell and left the field in a neck brace and on a stretcher. He was released from hospital on Sunday night but remains a major doubt for Twickenham.
England meet up again at their Bagshot base on Wednesday on a high after Saturday’s 26-25 win over France knowing, with Italy and Wales to come, a win over Scotland keeps them in the Six Nations title hunt.
Scotland will arrive at Twickenham as Calcutta Cup holders and have had a jinx over England having not lost to them since 2020 but Steve Borthwick’s side have finally got a monkey off their back.
Their string of narrow defeats in 2024, plus the 27-22 opening defeat to Ireland, were starting to grate and Lawrence insists the French win has given the squad belief if they keep their foot on the gas.
He added: “There’s huge belief within this squad that we can go far as a team.
“The results weren’t coming for us and obviously we were all frustrated. Like fans, we have expectations for us to win games and we weren’t quite there.
“But last week we took real promise and belief from the fact that we can actually go up against the top sides. We led in Ireland but we let it slip away and this week we managed to hold on and made sure we kept firing shots at the French.
“In the end we managed to get the win and we can use it as a launchpad to move forward and hopefully we can rebuild, recover and go again against Scotland.”
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