Russell holds key for Scotland to topple Ireland and set up title tilt

I n a not unfamiliar plotline Scotland enter the penultimate round of the Six Nations desperate for a win. Refreshingly, this time such a result would mean not the avoidance of a wooden spoon but a tilt at their first championship of the century – a first Six Nations title, full stop.

Perhaps desperate is the wrong word then. Would-be champions are never desperate for anything. If Scotland want to convince as such, they will be using bold words, such as “confident” and “ambitious”, and they must play accordingly at Murrayfield on Sunday afternoon.

Rather it is the marketeers of this year’s edition of the Six Nations who may be feeling desperate. Ireland are the visitors to Edinburgh, oozing confidence and ambition, as if they were exhaling it. One more big win, to go with the 15 points out of 15 they have already, would all but put the championship to bed a round early. Super Saturday would become, well, Saturday.

A win for Scotland would change all of that. It might even conjure echoes of Super Saturday 2015, when all three matches featured potential winners.

How likely is it? Ireland have won their last seven matches against Scotland, and 11 of the last 12. The bookies have Scotland as seven-point underdogs. That equates, in their world, to a little less than a 30% chance of a home win. So not out of the question but …

Let us not patronise Scotland any longer with talk of how talented they are, how capable of beating anyone on their day, and so on. If the feeling persists that they remain vulnerable, for all their derring-do, to muscular, consistent teams who keep coming at them, this nemesis is best exemplified by the Irish. Hence that recent record against them.

Scotland’s fortunes have long been embodied by their