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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Simon Collings

Six Nations: Nail-biting wins building England 'character', says Maro Itoje

Captain fantastic: Maro Itoje was impressive as England beat Scotland to win the Calcutta Cup at Twickenham - (Getty Images)

England captain Maro Itoje joked that head coach Steve Borthwick will lose more of his hair if they keep being involved in nail-biting wins.

For the second Six Nations game in a row, England won by a solitary point as they defeated Scotland 16-15 at Twickenham on Saturday.

Fin Smith was the hero for England as his long-range penalty proved to be the winning kick.

Scotland, however, suffered heartbreak as Finn Russell missed a late conversion, his third of the match, and they blew the chance to win the Test.

“I think they are good experiences for the team to go through for the growth of this team,” said Itoje.

“We have been on the end of some negative results, tight in the last moment of games.

“Now we are, I guess, finding a way to win these tight exchanges and I think all these experiences build the character of the team.

“Hopefully we can keep on building, but it would be nice if it wasn’t so narrow at the end.

“We will work hard to try and make it a little bit easier. I think more of his [Borthwick’s] hair might fall out if we keep doing this.”

The victory over Scotland means that England have now won two games on the spin to put themselves potentially in the hunt for the Six Nations title.

They are currently second in the table and need France to do them a favour in two weeks’ time by beating Ireland in Dublin.

“The performance was a bit mixed,” said Itoje. “Scotland played a lot in our half and we didn’t exit the way we wanted but we did fight and scrap. There is loads for us to get better at but we are delighted to win.

“In the first half and the second half, we probably didn’t play as much as we wanted and Scotland probably played more than us but we were more clinical than we have been.

“There is a feeling we are going to score so we just need to find ways of being there more and then we will execute more.”

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