England captain Tom Curry refused to put the blame for his team’s Calcutta Cup defeat on the yellow card shown to teammate Luke Cowan-Dickie.
Scotland won back-to-back Calcutta Cup matches for the first time since 1984 after a late penalty try, which saw Cowan-Dickie sin-binned for deliberately slapping a cross-field kick out of play, was followed by a match-winning penalty kick from Finn Russell.
But although his first match as skipper ended in disappointment, Curry was full of praise for Scotland and saw positives in England’s performance.
“If we’re going to win big games and big moments like that we can’t rely on just one moment in the game,” said Curry.
“So we’ll get round to it (analysing the incident) and have a look together, but it is a game of 80 minutes and not just one moment.
“We need to reflect and be better ourselves.
“Our emotions are up-down, up-down, in the first half I thought we put ourselves in a really good position.
“In the second half discipline probably cost us, so it’s just one of those games where we have mixed emotions really.
“But I think we need to give credit to them. They put a lot of pressure on us in the breakdown and we probably weren’t accurate enough ourselves, which slowed us down.”
Curry admitted that although he was proud of leading his country in their 2022 Guinness Six Nations opener, it wasn’t the overriding emotion.
He added: “It was an emotional day, but we play rugby only to win. So it’s bittersweet.”
England head coach Eddie Jones also gave credit to their opponents and lamented his team’s ability to be ruthless when on top.
The defeat at BT Murrayfield means Jones’ team has now lost four of their last six games in the Guinness Six Nations Championship.
“It was a good effort by our team,” he said. “Scotland were a bit better than us and took their chances.
“There was nothing in the game, it was a three-point game that could have gone either way, but congratulations to Scotland, and they deserve their victory.
“We’re not going to debate the decision at the end, the referee is in charge and we accept his decisions.
“We don’t apportion any blame to Luke, he was just contesting a ball in a different area and the referee adjudicated that it was a yellow card. We accept that.
“We’ve only got ourselves to blame. It just comes down to the fact that we weren’t clinical enough today.
“But we will be next week.”
Despite the disappointing start, Jones added that his team won’t give up on lifting the Championship just yet, even if their Grand Slam hopes were now dashed.
He said: “Given the quality of the competition. All we should worry about is the next game. “So we go to Italy next week and if we get a win against Italy, we’re back in the competition.”
