White wants to enjoy away day

Transferring Scotland’s fine form at Murrayfield in recent matches into similarly impressive performances on the road is what the remainder of this season’s Six Nations is all about, according to captain Jason White.

The Scotland team will fly to Dublin tomorrow lunchtime ahead of Saturday’s clash with Ireland at Lansdowne Road. Then, a week later, they will be in Rome for the climax of this season’s championship against Italy.

If both results go their way then it is possible that White and his team could be crowned tournament champions for the first time since the Five Nations became the Six Nations in 1999.

However, for that to happen other results beyond Scotland’s control would have to go their way, so for the time being White has chosen to concentrate only on what he and his team are able to influence directly.

“The biggest factor in our thinking is that our next match is an away game,” he said yesterday. “Five of our last six games have been at home so now it is about taking our form and producing good wins against teams away from home.”

“Why do you play better at home? Is it the crowd?

"Those are questions that I don’t really know the answer to, but I think the most important thing is to do your basics well and if we do that and defend with the same courage and work-rate for each other as we did two weeks ago, then that’s the sort of baseline we need to have.”