Scotland will be ‘favourites to beat England’ says coach Jones

England coach Eddie Jones says Scotland will be the favourites going into the opening match of the Six Nations later this month. Jones says the fact that he has very little time to prepare the England team since taking over as coach will make their opposition the team people will expect to win their opening match. In an interview with the BBC, Jones said: “We've only had six training sessions together so there is an enormous pressure on Scotland to perform and not so much on us”.
 
The sides will meet on the opening day of the tournament at Murrayfield on Saturday the 6th February. But despite Jones saying that Scotland will be the favourites, betting sites like Betway have England as favourites to win the opening match. Betway was one of the best betting sites of last year, so since they have England at favourites at 4/9 to win then the match then maybe Scotland's chances aren't as good as Jones is making out.
 
The betting sites have good reason to think that Scotland will lose the match, as the side has lost their last seven Six Nations games. Scotland has only won one of their last 12 games in the Six Nations championship, and that was an extremely narrow 21-20 win over Italy in Rome in February 2014. Scotland has also failed to beat England since 2008.
 
Despite not winning in all but one of their last 12 matches in this competition, Scotland's form compared to England's was a completely different story in last year's World Cup. Vern Cotter led his Scotland side to the quarter-finals, where they were only narrowly beaten by a strong Australia side in a heartbreaking defeat for the side. Meanwhile England failed to even get out of the group stages of their home tournament at the surprise of most of their fans. The performance was so bad that it eventually cost Stuart Lancaster his job.
 
When it comes to the other opening matches of the tournament, the closest fought contest looks to be on Sunday when Ireland takes on Wales. The Ireland squad go into the match as the favourite at 4/6 on betting site Betway, only slightly in front of Wales at 6/4. The news that fly-half Johnny Sexton is fit to join the side in the opening game after he was taken off with a suspected concussion during Lenister's big defeat to the Wasps in the Challenge Cup will be a boost to the Ireland squad.
 
In the other match, France looks almost certain to take the first win of the tournament against Italy. Betting site Betway currently have extremely long odds of 10/1 for Italy to take a shock win over France, who are 1/14 favourites to win. Over the last few years Ireland have become regular holders of the wooden spoon in the tournament, with only Scotland performing worse than them last year to take the prize nobody wants. Many of the Ireland squad won't know the feeling of taking the wooden spoon home though as coach Jacques Brunel has named a surprising 10 uncapped players in his 30 man squad for the tournament.