Ex-Falkirk star Finn Russell’s display against England one of his best yet for Scotland, according to head coach Gregor Townsend

The 29-year-old’s conversion and two penalties accounted for eight of the 20 points the Scots scored to the English’s 17 at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium to retain the Calcutta Cup they won in England a year ago and get their 2022 Six Nations campaign off to a flying start.

The Racing 92 fly-half’s kicking also helped his side rack up their first back-to-back wins against England since 1983 and 1984 by setting up attacking moves for Darcy Graham and Duhan van der Merwe yielding points.

Praising Russell, at Falkirk for the 2011-12 season, after Saturday’s game, Townsend said: “I thought he had an outstanding game today.

“He had a couple of really good kicks in the first half into the bottom-right corner.

“His attacking kicks for Duhan and Darcy were obviously very accurate, and his goal-kicking was excellent.

“He’s been practising that a lot at his club even though he’s not kicking all that often for Racing.

“I felt he managed the game too. There was a lot of pressure on him in terms of line-speed from the opposition, but he was picking the right player to pass to.

“The last 10 to 15 minutes were our best attacking sequences and Finn was at the heart of that. That’s saying something when you see the weather conditions because that’s when they were the worst of the game.

“That was one of his best performances for Scotland, really pleasing.”

Townsend’s team now travel to Cardiff this Saturday to take on Wales, last year’s champions, for the Doddie Weir Cup.

The Welsh will be hoping to bounce back from their 29-7 battering by Ireland at the weekend, but their visitors equally will be out to make amends for following up their 11-6 Calcutta Cup victory at Twickenham Stadium in a 2021 with a 25-24 defeat at home to Wales.

“Every game is different,” said Townsend, 48.

“Last year we started really well, and that showed the confidence the players had from their win at Twickenham.

“We were 17-3 up, so how we prepared last year was fine.

“It was just how we dealt with situations like not scoring a try in the Wales 22 at the end of the first half and giving away three penalties in a row to hand momentum back to Wales, then, in the second half, not dealing with the red card when we needed to adjust.

“I’m sure there are things next week we’ll have to adapt and adjust to, but I feel this team is much better at that.”

Pointing to what he believes is an improvement in his side’s ability to deal with adverse or unexpected challenges, Townsend cited the penalty try Scotland scored against Eddie Jones’s England side as an example of coming up with a way of dealing with a scrappy ball

“That was something that hadn’t really gone the way we wanted it to go, but we adapted to where the space was,” he said.

“Confidence and belief are important. They give you the ability to adapt and show character, but we have to deliver the detail as well.

“We can be better than this week, and we believe Wales will be better than they showed this week.”

There is still plenty of room for improvement for his side and they’ll need get better at both defending and attacking if they’re going to mount a challenge for this year’s Six Nations title, said Townsend, boss of the national team since May 2017.

“Being tough to beat is really important. It usually defines championship-winning teams, a strong defence in any sport,” he said.

“We have set really good standards over the past couple of seasons and the players now enjoy defending.

“Defence is all about getting the ball back, getting it back in terms of turnovers or penalties or getting it back in terms of kicks, so we know our defence is really entwined with our attack, and we’ve got some really dangerous attackers in our team who we want to give the ball to.

“We want to give them a framework to play and one in which they are encouraged to play.

“Getting both of those sides of the game right is so important, but defence certainly helps you win those tight games.”

Saturday’s game against Wales kicks off at 2.15pm.