EDDIE JONES SAID England will never come to terms with the 11-6 defeat by Scotland that has put an early dent in their Guinness Six Nations title defence.

The Scots claimed their first victory at Twickenham since 1983 after a dominant performance on the 150th anniversary of the first meeting between the rivals, wing Duhan Van Der Merwe crossing for the only try.

Gregor Townsend’s underdogs celebrated the win wildly at the final whistle and the only disappointment was that that the scoreline failed to reflect their mastery of opponents who failed to fire a shot.

“You never atone for a game like this. This stays with you for a long time,” England head coach Jones said.

“But the most important thing is that we get together and we find a way to improve our performance and play like England do when we come up against Italy next week.”

Jones returned to a well-worn theme of blaming himself for one of the worst performances of his reign as England were woefully off the pace, shooting themselves in the foot with a high penalty count.

“We just couldn’t find a way to get into the game. On a day like this the set-piece will always be important, the contest in the air will be important, the gainline will be important, and we couldn’t win any of those areas,” Jones said.

“We just seemed to be off the pace and I have to blame myself, I didn’t prepare the team well enough. The players play the game but sometimes you have those days and we had one today. Scotland played very well.

“They had a particular game plan which they stuck to and executed really well. They had enormous possession in the first half and a big penalty count and we’ve only got ourselves to blame for the discipline issues. It was just one of those days.”

Apart from Billy Vunipola, England’s Saracens contingent had not played since the final of the Autumn Nations Cup on December 6 and unsurprisingly they made little impact.

“We’re just grateful for the opportunity to be able to play rugby,” Jones said. “Maybe it wasn’t the ideal preparation but it is what it is and we’ve got to be good enough to be able to cope with that. Everyone is a good selector after the game.”

Scotland captain Stuart Hogg admitted his team had been confident they could pull off a first win at Twickenham for Scotland in 38 years.

“We’d talked a lot in the last couple of weeks about lifting a nation, and I believe we’ve done that,” Hogg said.

Scotland's Hamish Watson, Scott Cummings and Scott Steele celebrate at the final whistle. PA PA

“This win is a huge deal to us all. During the week we said that if we got everything right on both sides of the ball we’d give ourselves a chance, and we did exactly that.

“I’m incredibly proud of the boys. We believed we could dome down here and win, but we kept that to ourselves. It was incredible for us.”

Head coach Townsend went as far as saying the result could be the nation’s greatest ever Test victory.

“I came down here a number of times as a player and then as a coach and hadn’t come away with anything,” said Townsend.

“So this result is definitely up there with the best ever results in our history, and certainly myself in my coaching career.

“Today the players were outstanding in really tricky conditions. It was wet the whole game, really heavy rain in the second half. So to win in these conditions against a very good side is a fantastic achievement.”

Townsend’s Scotland have battled through patchy results and performances in pushing beyond the 2019 World Cup, but now the former Test fly-half insists his squad are ready to step up and be counted.

“We all enjoyed last year, you learn in defeats, grow as a team in adversity,” Townsend continued. “We had moments before and after the World Cup, and that’s how we’ve been shaped as a group of players and coaches.

“It was so good to see the players play so well in the period of Finn Russell’s yellow card, and we won that 10 minutes 3-0. It wasn’t just one way of playing, we had a lot of variety and a lot of maturity in our play.”