Wigan duly marked the testimonial match for their captain Andy Farrell with a convincing win but this was more of

Wigan duly marked the testimonial match for their captain, Andy Farrell, with a convincing win, but this was more of a celebration of a great career that any guide to what will happen when the two sides meet again in the Challenge Cup in nine days’ time. Julian O’Neill’s first touch of the ball for his new club was a knock-on, his second a pass that bounced off Brian Carney to give Lee Jackson a gift try.It took Farrell to get Wigan moving, his charge on to Terry Newton’s pass producing their first try and his long ball to another debutant, Jamie Ainscough, their second.With Hull losing some shape when their scrum-half, Richard Horne, went off dazed from a heavy tackle from David Furner, Wigan seemed to be taking firm control through two quick tries from Newton, showing what an asset he would have been to Great Britain had he been fit for the Ashes series. If Ian McGeechan has his way – and in a quietly persuasive manner, the most successful of all Lions coaches generally makes people see things from his perspective – the 22 Scottish players who confront England at Murrayfield in this weekend’s Calcutta Cup match will do so with parched throats, beads of cold sweat on their foreheads and a knot of dread deep in the pits of their stomachs. In McGeechan’s experience, winning rugby often has its roots in the fear of losing. “We’ve certainly witnessed it in our games against the All Blacks over the last decade or so. New Zealand still pose the ultimate threat to a team’s psychological and physical well-being: they can destroy you, in a dozen different ways.

We’ve played some of our best rugby against them, both in Scotland and over there. Why? Because we know what will happen if we fail to raise our game, almost to levels beyond our own imagining.”So, tomorrow night’s schedule will presumably begin with a nice team supper at a plush Edinburgh hotel, followed by a double bill of Seven and Silence of the Lambs. Or even some old footage of Wade Dooley, the Lancashire police constable, perforating Doddie Weir’s eardrum with a sly right-hander in 1992, or Rob Wainwright being punched into the Outer Hebrides by an unidentified English fist in 1996. That should give the kilted brethren a suitably powerful dose of the heebie-geebies and have them shaking from head to toe.England-Scotland matches are not played out on a vicarage lawn with cucumber sandwiches for afters; they are stern, mean-minded contests, entirely representative of the spirit in which the two nations have traditionally done sporting business with each other. McGeechan has been through enough of these shindigs – he played in half a dozen between 1973 and 1979 – to know how many beans make five on Calcutta Cup day, to the extent that he has twice denied the red rose army a Grand Slam just when they thought it was theirs for the grasping. And for that reason, he does not fear this England team in the way he would like his players to fear them.”They have a consistency about them now that makes them one of the best two international sides in the world,” McGeechan admitted.

“In fact, you could argue that over the last 12 months, they have performed better than anyone But if England have evolved, we have evolved too. We finished a poor second at Twickenham last season [43-3 on the scoreboard and six-zip on the try-count, to be precise] but I think this game will be very different, simply because both sides have moved on. To play England effectively, you need to get hands on the ball and not give possession away, because they’ll keep it for ever if you do. I believe we are more capable of doing that now than we were 11 months ago.”Of course, McGeechan is working at a disadvantage, not least numerically.