The next three weeks will make or break England’s 2019 Rugby World Cup campaign. Get it right, with victories over France in Paris and Ireland at Twickenham, and the Eddie Jones’ blueprint for success in Japan remains intact. Get it wrong, with losses at the Stade de France and at home in the NatWest Six Nations championship for the first time since 2012, and the best-laid plans will have to be ripped up and a drawing board ordered from IKEA to be shipped into Pennyhill Park.

The finale of the 2018 championship – a much heralded tournament and living wonderfully up to the hype – carries that sort of significance for England following the manner of their defeat against Scotland, not just beaten but exposed.

There is, of course, a plausible interpretation of those events at Murrayfield that says it would be even dafter to depict Jones and England as a busted flush as it was to write off Gregor Townsend and Scotland after their opening day debacle in Cardiff. Jones has a far more substantial body of work to produce as evidence for continuing faith than did Townsend. If this Scotland is to be praised to the hilt for Saturday’s heroics than so must England be cut slack.