Jim Hamilton: After all the frustration, it’s time to make it happen

I HAVE never felt better about a game than I do heading into this Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield. What the public do not see is the effort players make in getting themselves into the best shape possible for this kind of challenge.

This is the biggest game of the year and the RBS Six Nations Championship is what you grow up dreaming about and, like me, hearing your dad talk about the country, the nation and how much it means to beat England.

For me, it has been a big journey over the last couple of years. I have always had the physicality, scrummage, lineout and mauling skills, but there was a perception around me in the media, and maybe in the coaches’ minds, that I didn’t have the agility or fitness to play 80 minutes in international rugby, especially with the way the game has changed.

I tried to work on that when I first came into the Scotland squad, but I shed a lot of weight very quickly and struggled to cope with that. I could not keep it off either and at Leicester it wasn’t a priority.

But since I went to Gloucester, I have worked steadily over the past 18 months and brought my weight down by about a stone and a half. The preparation for the World Cup was fantastic and allowed me to improve my fitness, and my body to get used to the demands I was placing on it.

I am not going to sprint in for tries from the halfway line, and I’m not a Richie Gray kind of player, but what it helps me with is improving my work-rate, my tackles, putting pressure on stand-offs when they are kicking and becoming more of an influence in games.

I have really grown and improved at Gloucester and I feel I have been playing the best rugby of my career this season, and now I am desperate to show that on the international stage.

This championship for us is all about winning games. We are an experienced, settled team now, and have all the tools to perform at a high level every time we go out there. With Glasgow playing well in the league this season and Edinburgh performing well in the Heineken Cup, the players are playing at a higher level more consistently so they understand what it takes to win games.

The other thing that I feel has changed in the Scotland squad in the last few years is the level of accountability. It has always been the management in the past telling us ‘this is what we want’ and ‘this is what you’re not doing’, whereas now we have more players stepping up to the plate and demanding more from each other, from themselves, and putting real pressure on themselves and the players around them.

That is what you see in a team that is successful. It seems natural, but actually it comes when there is a good feel in a squad, when there are players who believe in the coaches, themselves and those around them, and have the confidence to say so. For us, it has also come from performing at a high level but not winning, and the disappointments and frustrations that come with that.

We have had all the talk, all the disappointments of the World Cup, and it all has to come into this one game at the weekend. We are not thinking about the championship as a whole, about what comes next, when there’s a break; none of that. Everything is just focused on England.

We have to start well. I think back to the Romania game in the World Cup and we didn’t play well for the middle part of that game, and I remember starting the Six Nations against France at Murrayfield and not playing well there and then having to try and claw your way back into the tournament.

We have an opportunity now against a good, but unsettled England team to put a marker down.

Obviously, as players we have to do a lot of media interviews and you are expected to talk up what you are going to do, and how you are going to do it. It is part of the game now, the media and publicity side, and you can not turn down interviews as professionals when, actually, sometimes you would rather just say nothing before a game.

But we understand our role in helping to generate interest in the game, and there is no player in this squad who does not value the support of everyone who reads The Scotsman for their daily fix of rugby, who has bought tickets for the Six Nations games, home and away, and all of those who will pack into Murrayfield today to cheer us on.

The backing at Murrayfield is unbelievable and there is no doubt that, while you play for yourself, your families and each other in the Scotland squad, at the front of your mind is always the supporters at Murrayfield.

We just want to go out and do it this weekend, stop talking and do it. England have some good players, but they have had a lot going on in the last few months, while we have to look to start from where we left off in the World Cup and, of course, go to that next level, and not allow ourselves to lose the game in the last few minutes.

The key, as ever, lies with the forwards. I have heard there is going to be rain, but I don’t really care what the weather is like. This game is going to be won and lost in the forwards. It always is with England.

But we also have good experience on the bench and one lesson we have learned from the World Cup, and our last game with England, is that we have to be prepared to play until the 80th minute to win it.

I can’t wait. I have not looked forward to a game so much. I have played every single game since coming back from the World Cup, but I feel fresh, fit and I’m not carrying any knocks. I can not go into a game feeling any better and I feel that incredible buzz to play and to win for Scotland.

Now we have to make it happen.