England coach Steve Borthwick admits Six Nations defeat by Scotland was ‘painful’ after his side suffered a fourth consecutive Calcutta Cup loss for the first time since 1896

England manager Steve Borthwick admitted it was a “painful” night in Scotland as his team suffered a fourth successive defeat in the Calcutta Cup for the first time since 1896.

Giant winger Duhan van der Merwe scored a hat-trick to start a night of raucous Scottish celebrations in Edinburgh.

He punished an error-riddled England to leave Borthwick’s side licking their wounds as they head into daunting tests against Ireland and France.

“What is very clear is that if you make so many managerial errors at this level, it is very difficult to win, especially against a team of the quality of Scotland,” Borthwick said.

“In the end we made it a lot easier for them to score, but they were very clinical. A big lesson for our team as it develops is that this amount of turnovers makes it very difficult to win.

“We would all love for the progression to be linear, but it’s not like that, especially at this level. You see a team that is trying to develop and add layers to their game, but today they made mistakes. Sometimes they punish you for it, sometimes No. It’s a really painful lesson.”

Scotland are enjoying an eight-year dominance over England in this competition and Borthwick added: “The Scotland team has been together for a long time, their 10s, 12s, 13s have started a dozen Tests together and it’s the first time our 10, 12 and 13 have started together and it seemed like it, right?

‘There was a lack of cohesion in what they did and too many fundamental errors. After a performance, when you think you haven’t maximized your potential, disappointment sets in. In that sense, the result on the scoreboard doesn’t matter, but I don’t think the team took full advantage of its potential today.”

Captain Jamie George made no attempt to hide his disappointment. He ended his team’s unlikely bid for a Grand Slam, but the hooker believes better days are ahead.

“If you look at our form over the last nine or ten games, we’ve won a lot of them,” said George (right). ‘If you look at the bigger picture of where we are as a team, how we are performing and where we are progressing, and you step back and look at it as a whole, there are a lot of positive signs.

‘Do we need to improve? Absolutely. Are we doing everything we can to achieve this? Absolutely.

‘The fact that we are back at Twickenham (against Ireland on March 9) is very exciting for me. I’ve talked a lot about the record we want to create at Twickenham and how difficult a place it must be for the opposition to come. That will largely be the focus.

‘Ireland are a great team, we know that. “They have shown that in recent weeks, months and years, but we are going to be a very difficult team to beat at Twickenham.”

Scotland coach Gregor Townsend expressed his delight at the victory over England, although he questioned the new mouthguard technology that led to prop Zander Fagerson being suspended in the 7th minute for a head injury assessment (HIA).

He said, ‘I saw the entrance again… just a normal entrance. What we have been doing over the last few years is making sure that any symptoms that are seen, multiple people can indicate if someone is requesting an HIA.

‘Zander was taken off for 10 minutes after what looked like a normal tackle, but there was a spike alert from the mouthguard.

“We have to keep an eye on that because we don’t want to take our best players off the field for 10 minutes if there are no concussion-related issues.”

“We want to protect our players, that’s for sure, but there’s a little more work to do before we get this technology right.”