Scotland played some of their best-ever rugby during Saturday's Six Nations victory over England, believes head coach Gregor Townsend.

Having started the 2026 championship with a demoralising defeat to Italy last week, Townsend's team responded with a huge 31-20 victory over their rivals at Murrayfield.

Ill-discipline cost England as Henry Arundell was sent to the sib-bin twice before half-time, with Scotland ruthlessly punishing their visitors when a man up.

Huw Jones went over twice while there were also tries for Jamie Ritchie and Ben White, as Scotland marked their 100th game under Townsend with a bonus-point win.

"After 20 minutes, I thought that was some of the best rugby we've ever played," Townsend told ITV Sport afterwards. "It's all you want as a coach. 

"Then, to see the effort in the second half, we became a team that would fight for each other and the supporters. We know that rugby brings out the best in us, being very aggressive and playing at speed."

Scotland have won four of their five home games against England under Townsend, including the last three in a row, and he does not see the fact they raise their game for the Calcutta Cup as a negative.

"We have played some of our best rugby against England and that's great," Townsend added. "I don't know why people see a negative in that; it's our biggest game.

"It seems to be a narrative that it's a negative that we do well in this fixture. We only see positives, and I reminded our players how well we've done in this fixture."

5 - Scotland have now won five of their last six #M6N matches against England (L1), more than they won against them across their first 21 meetings in the Six Nations era (W4 D2 L15). Swing. pic.twitter.com/Jd53ZUXRHk

— OptaJonny (@OptaJonny) February 14, 2026

England coach Steve Borthwick, meanwhile, was disappointed with the scoring opportunities his team passed up after falling behind early on.

"What we certainly did was create lots of opportunities to score," he said. "There was a lot of time, particularly in that second half, where we were in the opposition 22.

"If we'd taken some of those chances maybe the game would have been different.

"When we played against New Zealand, we went 12-0 down, but we reeled them in gradually. Unfortunately, we gave them too much of a headstart and gave ourselves too much to do. Playing 30 minutes of that first 50 with 14 men hurt us."