The climax of this year’s RBS Six Nations Championship is yet another example of perfect timing: the RFU would prefer it to have been at Twickenham this afternoon, when England play Scotland, but the tournament’s organisers and broadcasters were accurate in their forecast and, as dusk falls, Wales and Ireland will go head to head at the Millennium Stadium in the last match of Super Saturday.

“We would love to be playing for the championship but we weren’t quite good enough in those two away games,” Martin Johnson, the England team manager, said yesterday and you suspect that, all along, he knew that might be the case. “Teams have to go through these sort of experiences and it can be difficult — but if you won everything easily, you wouldn’t get the same satisfaction.”

Johnson acknowledged that if it had been suggested in 2003, when England won the grand slam, that the country would still be waiting for another Six Nations honour in 2009, he would have been surprised. But, realist that he is, he will be happy enough if England can take into the Calcutta Cup match the attitude that produced five tries against France last Sunday.

“For us, Scotland is the main event,” he said. “Perhaps last weekend we got the breaks we did not get earlier in the championship. People say we were ambitious, full of brilliant running, but four of our tries came from turnovers and we have to out-work, out-enthuse Scotland. If we do that, we’ll create opportunities and then we’ll need to be precise in taking them.”

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Joe Worsley and Toby Flood came through fitness tests to thumb and shoulder respectively, which will allow England to field an unchanged XV, a team moreover that offer a candidate for player of the tournament in Delon Armitage. The full back is nominated with three Irish contenders, Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell and Jamie Heaslip, the Wales full back, Lee Byrne, and the Italy captain, Sergio Parisse, good company to be keeping in your first international season.

It is symptomatic of a change in English fortunes that should carry them through against the Scots and, if the gods are with them, could even leave them runners-up, as they were last year. Second place means little, of course, but it would be a far cry from the demolition job performed on England by the southern-hemisphere teams in November. Realistically, third in the table is the best they should hope for and as much, at this stage, as they deserve.

At the start of the championship, Scotland were many people’s dark horses based on their encouraging autumn. The loss for the first two games of key tight forwards, Euan Murray and Nathan Hines, hurt them, as did some curious selections outside the scrum, but a win at Twickenham, where they have not prevailed since 1983, would draw a veil over some of their deficiencies and may extend a lifeline to their head coach, Frank Hadden, whose employers seek a minimum return of two wins from each championship.

“We’re just concentrating on putting in a really strong performance, trying to beat this English team,” Mike Blair, the Scotland captain, said. “The consequences of that, we’ll speak about afterwards. As players we certainly back the coaching staff.”

Scotland’s sole win was at home to Italy. They led Ireland for a long time until the back row offered Peter Stringer a hole that allowed the scrum half to create a try for Heaslip. That contributed to Scotland’s one change, the promotion of Scott Gray at flanker into a scrum that has the respect of Graham Rowntree, the England scrum coach: “Their forward pack has improved greatly under Mike Brewer and they have plenty of big guys,” he said.

Rowntree is also keenly aware of the number of offences, nine in all, that England were penalised for against France at the scrum and seeks to erase them. So much will be down to the interpretation of the referee, Marius Jonker (the fourth South African official England have seen in the championship), but it will be a heavyweight contest where Scotland will expect parity at least.

The critical challenge will be at the breakdown, where Scotland have performed strongly, and here Worsley’s presence is crucial. “Joe has been one of our players of the tournament, if not one of the players of the tournament,” Johnson said. “His off-field demeanour brings confidence to the team, he tackles, he carries the ball, everything about him has been first class.”

There have been periods in the past six years, not least the 2007 World Cup, when England have been as competitive as anyone, but that has been coupled with utter inconsistency, the curse they are trying to shrug off. They have not done so yet, but today should be another step down the road.

Twickenham 3.30pm TV BBC One

Referee M Jonker (South Africa)

England

15 D Armitage
14 M Cueto
13 M Tindall
12 R Flutey
11 U Monye
10 T Flood
9 H Ellis
1 A Sheridan
2 L Mears
3 P Vickery
4 S Borthwick (capt)
5 S Shaw
6 T Croft
7 J Worsley
8 N Easter

Replacements

D Hartley, J White, NKennedy, J Haskell, D Care, A Goode, MTait

Scotland

15 C Paterson
14 S Danielli
13 M Evans
12 G Morrison
11 T Evans
10 P Godman
9 M Blair (capt)
1 A Dickinson
2 R Ford
3 E Murray
4 J White
5 J Hamilton
6 A Strokosch
7 S Gray
8 S Taylor

Replacements

D Hall, M Low, N Hines, K Brown, CCusiter, N De Luca, H Southwell

Sheridan v Murray: Battle of the quiet men

Graham Rowntree must watch the clash of Andrew Sheridan, the 6ft 4in, 18st 12lb England loose-head prop, and Euan Murray, the 6ft 1in, 18st 9lb tight head, with a neutral eye. Rowntree is the England scrum coach and will perform the same function for the Lions. “Murray's a beast of a man with a big engine, a shrewd defender, good athleticism, a big, square lump,” he said.

The same can be said of Sheridan, but he does not see the contest in individual terms. “It's gone further and further away from a one-on-one contest,” he said. “Two packs, a metre apart, being launched into each other like a catapult. It's who comes off best.”

Murray says simply: “Each opponent has his own characteristic.” But Rowntree will remember how well Scotland's front row played against South Africa last November and will expect the same today.