LAST year’s heavy defeat at Twickenham is still in the minds of the Scotland players as they prepare to host England at BT Murrayfield on Saturday.

A Scotland team chasing the Triple Crown travelled down to London last year with the hope of causing an upset in the Six Nations, but were given a lesson in Test rugby.

They were sent packing with a 61-21 thrashing as England retained their title in style, but hooker Stuart McInally admits the manner of the defeat for Scotland has stayed in the minds of the players, who will be looking to continue the form showed against France last time out.

“It’s definitely still in the back of the minds,” McInally admitted. “You can’t just ignore the game and pretend it didn’t happen.

“We will have to look at the game and areas we need to sharpen up.

“That is obviously still in the back of a few minds and we will want to right a few wrongs from that game, especially being back at Murrayfield.”

The Dark Blues have been boosted by the potential return to the squad of WP Nel and Zander Fagerson, who have both been sidelined so far due to injuries.

The decimated front row was deemed an area of weakness in the lead up to the Wales and France games, but Scotland responded manfully in Edinburgh last week with McInally and Simon Berghan in particular standing out, and the hooker is pleased with how they have performed ahead of their biggest challenge yet.

He said: “I feel the scrum has gone fairly well in the first couple of weeks.

“I don’t really know what people were expecting but we were never going to massively struggle.

“We have some great props and great second rows with a lot of weight coming through there.

“Scrummaging is not just about the front row and we’re all in good shape and scrummaging quite well at the moment.

“We are taking confidence from that French game where I felt we could actually have been a bit more dominant if we had held our shape and our feet a bit more.

“A few went down as we were going forward, but we will take confidence from that but we are under no illusions England are a level up again so we will need to be even better to go well against them.”

He added: “We have a hell of a lot of depth now, especially in the prop position with how well Bergie played at the weekend.

“He was a real standout performer not just in the scrum but around the pitch as well.

“It’s great for the team and great for us at Edinburgh and Scotland that you have these players coming through.”

McInally’s club coach Richard Cockerill has praised his Edinburgh side as they push for an unlikely play-off spot.

The capital outfit grabbed a 17-16 win over Ulster in Belfast to move them up to third place in the Guinness PRO14’s Conference B.

With seven regular-season games left, starting with Dragons away on Friday, Cockerill knows it is now down to his side to maintain their current form and book their place in the quarter-finals.

The Gunners head coach told his club’s Twitter account: “The Edinburgh players should be really proud of themselves.

“That win puts us in a really good position to try and make the top three, which at the start of the season was pretty unrealistic.

“Now it’s in our own hands.”

Meanwhile, Dave Rennie is looking forward to seeing his conference-topping Glasgow side become even stronger in the weeks ahead as their lengthy injury list finally clears.

Second row duo Tim Swinson and Scott Cummings and centre Sam Johnson all returned to action on Friday night as Warriors clinched a 37-23 victory over Cheetahs to secure their place in the Guinness PRO14 play-offs.

“Having these boys back gives us a little bit of a harder edge,” the head coach told Warriors’ website.

“For those big men to play as many minutes as they did, it shows how hard they worked in recovery.

“It’s been a hell of a road back for Tim since getting injured back in November, so it’s exciting from our point of view getting a few boys back tonight and hopefully a few more in the next couple of weeks.”