Geordie Gwynn insists Scotland will come out flying against England when they meet in the U20 Six Nations on Friday night after showing too much respect to France.

The Scotland vice-captain plays his rugby down south having been born there and he’s excited to get out onto the field at the Hive once more. He’ll line up at centre again having spent last season’s Six Nations playing on the wing and he feels much more at home there, and reckons the whole Scotland squad has stepped up their game over the last year to leave them in a good place.

Scotland looked like they were going to be on the receiving end of a heavy defeat when they faced France two weeks ago before a second half fightback showed great character, although they couldn’t quite get close enough to cause an upset against the World U20 champions.

Gwynn is confident lessons have been learned from that and they can now put in an 80 minute performance having started brilliantly against Wales and finished well against France.

He said: “We’re in a much better stronger position now than we were last year. We’ve got a strong group of boys here. Last year I was playing out on the wing but this year I’m in the centre and part of the leadership group so I’m really enjoying that part of it, analysing the game and speaking more in team meetings. We’ve got a great group of lads who are close on and off the pitch which is really important. We’re staying positive going into England.

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“The training has been a lot better and more physical. There’s a lot of competition whereas last year we had some really good players like Ben Afshar, Duncan Munn. They were standouts and we have that this year as well but there’s a lot more competition in training and boys are pushing each other on in a healthy way and its pushed us on.

“It’s really important to start fast. We showed too much respect to France last week and we’ll show England the respect they deserve and no more than that. We’ll start the game fast and be clinical when we get into their half. Maybe a few times last week we weren’t accurate enough so we’ve driven that in training to start fast and be brave to take them on.”