Ross Ford surprised by England's reaction to Italy's ruckless strategy

Scotland hooker Ross Ford said he was surprised by the reaction of England to the ruckless strategy employed by Italy in the Six Nations encounter between the two teams.

Conor O'Shea's men failed to engage in a ruck that allowed their players to legally drift behind the tackle area without being offside leaving England off the guard in the first half where they trailed by 5-10. During the phase, England skipper Dylan Hartley and flanker James Haskell were seen in a heated conversation with referee Romain Poite on checking the legality of the strategy employed by Azzurris.

However, England managed to turn things around in the second half where they scored five tries and sealed a 36-15 bonus point victory.

After the game, England coach Eddie Jones described the ploy used by Italy was against the spirit of the game and urged World Rugby to devise revised breakdown rules.

"It was interesting. I didn't know what the hoo-hah was all about really.

"There have been teams who have done the same thing in Super Rugby and in the PRO12 before.

"It's just one of those things you adapt too.

"It's strange when you first see it because you're not expecting it, it's not the norm.

"But it's a pretty simple fix to get round it."

England will head into the Saturday's game on the brink of levelling New Zealand's record of 18 consecutive wins. Scotland skipper John Barclay lauded England for their stupendous run and further added that the pressure to maintain the streak in the Calcutta Cup tie will be on the red rose team.

"As much as the media would like there to be an extra edge and every time you play a Calcutta Cup match it gets blown up, the fact is we're playing a Six Nations which is five games long and we're on game four.

"They are all big games and this is the next one.

"That is maybe a slightly boring response but that's the reality of it. You don't look at the following week, you look at England - they are too good a side to look any further.

"Expectations are there but we don't put any undue pressure on ourselves.

"We kind of feel like the expectations are more on England. They have gone how many games unbeaten. We've only won two games this Six Nations.

"We feel like there's not much pressure on us. We're playing some good stuff which is maybe externally building a little bit of pressure.

"But within the group we're not getting carried away.

"England are playing well. You don't go that many games unbeaten without playing well ."