LONG READ Mick Cleary: 'England are yet to deliver a statement win on the road. Until they do claims they're World Cup contenders’ must be in question.'

Who were those guys in white? Imposters who stole into Murrayfield in the depth of night, slipping on those shirts and fooling the lot of us? Were we seeing Aesop’s Rugby Fable played out in front of us, the tale of the rooster who turned into a feather duster in plain sight, no longer strutting but being tossed around: from cocks of the walk to scratching about in the dirt?

Who was to blame? Them for getting ahead of themselves? Or us, for creating the hype and inflating expectations beyond reality, endorsing those delusions of grandeur? Or perhaps Steve Borthwick, the stony-faced one who gave you nowt yet who changed in mid-flow, setting targets and voicing goals to be chased, Grand Slam delights in a Parisian springtime? All gone, all disappeared into the darkening skies, spirited away to the skirl of a lone bagpiper. Thousands of England fans were to be found on an Edinburgh Sunday morning scrabbling around in the rubble to piece together shattered dreams.

How has it come to this? Are England not all that they were cracked up to be? Or is this the England of 16 months ago vintage, playing a good game on paper but found wanting on grass? The magnificent triviality that is sport, as that late Scotsman, Hugh McIlvanney once described it, chuckling away up in the heavens, would be a good witness to call to the stand. These encounters are not X-Box games where the data always leads to a predictable outcome. Rugby is a game of heart and soul as much as it is of muscle and bone – and those factors played very big on Saturday, transforming Scotland from the drowned rats of Rome into warriors of the north, leaving England on their backsides, swamped by the mythology of the occasion as well as by the sharp tactical hit job done on them by under siege head coach, Gregor Townsend. Oh, and then there is Finn Russell to factor in. Again. That genie was well and truly out of its bottle. Marvellous.

England ought still to have been in the fight. The upbeat mood music that accompanied them over the border was perfectly in tune with their form. The symphonies of praise were not penned by pompous English followers, typically inflated colonial guff. You don’t fluke 12 wins on the bounce. You don’t beat Argentina three times or even a not-what-they-were New Zealand. You can count the number of times Scotland have beaten the All Blacks without having any fingers.

All this is a matter of record. But Scotland grew as the white shirts came down the tunnel. It was ever thus, and England cannot take any refuge in the fact that Scotland were on a death-or-glory mission in the wake of their dismal showing at the Stadio Olimpico. The Red Rose badge stirs the loins of oppositions right around the world. It’s all part of the deal. Get used to it. As England thought they had.

England’s axis through 10-12-13 had a horrible time of it. Judgment at this level is severe. Only the best endure.

What will be troubling Borthwick is that this was not a story of passion alone boosting an opponent’s performance levels. Scotland won, and handsomely so, because they were smarter, sharper and accurate, out-thinking and out-executing England in almost everything that they did. Bar the scrum. They kicked and chased particularly well in a facet of the game at which England thought they had trump cards to play. Instead it was Kyle Steyn who won Player of the Match and Henry Arundell who suffered the humiliation of the long walk to red-card exile. If the first yellow card against him was  harsh, then the second for his reckless challenge on the airborne Steyn might have been a straight red for some officials. There can be no complaints.

Expect the unexpected is the mantra of elite coaches. England were supposed to be prepared for being a man down. They didn’t look it. Their defence was flummoxed, Scotland targeting the No 13 channel and exploiting Tommy Freeman’s inexperience there. Fraser Dingwall alongside looked to be what he probably is, a worthy high-achieving club player who has his moments. In fact, England’s axis through 10-12-13 had a horrible time of it. Judgment at this level is severe. Only the best endure. It’s time for a blend of Seb Atkinson or Max Ojomoh and Ollie Lawrence to show what they have to offer in the centre with Freeman back where he is at his best, on the wing.

And George Ford? Oh dear. His all-round game was decent enough although England are too in awe of that blasted data, hoisting high, relying on statistical evidence that shows a good return from the tap-backs or pressure on opponents inside their own half. You yearn for a Russell moment when the paybook is shredded, as it is by a Matthieu Jalibert or a Thomas Ramos banana-kick through, and an off-the-cuff scenario unfolds.

Ford has been the man in possession of the No 10 shirt. And rightly so, even if it was originally on his shoulders in the absence of Fin Smith on Lions’ duty. Yet with each outing comes scrutiny. Ford has been a master orchestrator, and was indeed so in the manner in which he shuffled and pop-passed for Arundell’s score. But a blob is a blob. And his error in going for a drop goal in the 53^rdminute was calamitous, the match-decider, the sort of mistake that would cost a team a knockout place in a World Cup. England’s prospects of a comeback win were obliterated. Time for Fin Smith? There has to be accountability across the board and there would be logic to making such a call. England’s Red Zone efficiency was dreadful.

The Maro Itoje question is taxing. The man is not at his best, understandably so. Yet he must be cut slack. He’ll be back and Saturday at the Allianz Twickenham may be his stage for renewal.

Elsewhere, England’s set-piece was sound, very much so in the scrum. Jamie George remains the more reliable thrower. Even though England didn’t actually lose a lineout the delivery in the early stages was shaky. The battle of the breakdown went Scotland’s way, more zealous and more precise. Is Henry Pollock worth a shot from the start? That would be more of a gamble than a Fin Smith selection for sure but the idea holds appeal.

The Maro Itoje question is taxing. The man is not at his best, understandably so. Yet he must be cut slack. He’ll be back and Saturday at the Allianz Twickenham may be his stage for renewal.

There can be no consolation in putting this down as some sort of necessary ‘learning’ experience on the way to a World Cup. That’s hogwash talk, relegating a Six Nations championship match to some sort of training ground status. The time for nurturing and experimenting is long past. England have yet to deliver a statement win on the road and until they do claims as to their out-and-out World Cup contenders’ billing must be in question.

Springbok head coach, Rassie Erasmus, will be sleeping easy in that regard. He might even have cracked a smile from afar as he watched the team that fell to earth.