De Luca out to seize on chance

Nick De Luca spent Scotland's last Calcutta Cup win "schmoozing" the prawn sandwich brigade at Murrayfield.

Now the 26-year-old plans to spend Saturday "smashing" into England's centres when he makes his first start in the famous old fixture after he was named as head coach Andy Robinson's only personnel change for this weekend's crunch clash, the Edinburgh star recalled for the first time since November 2008.

"I was actually in one of the boxes (when Scotland beat England at Murrayfield), doing the schmoozing of people who pay a lot of money," De Luca told Press Association Sport. "It was the traditional wet day."

A year later, De Luca did make the bench as Scotland went down to the latest in a long line of defeats at Twickenham.

"Twickenham's an immense stadium," he recalled.

"With that many mad English people, it was noisy.

"It was a really physical game, which I enjoy, and I'm looking forward to coming out here, getting our home crowd behind us and hopefully flipping the result."

To do that, De Luca and centre partner Graeme Morrison must stop opposite numbers Mathew Tait and Riki Flutey in their tracks.

"I look forward to pitting myself against them and hopefully coming out on top," said De Luca, who has played alongside Morrison for Scotland before but never from the start of a match.

"We're there to do a job: we need to get that go-forward, make sure that our D's (defence) solid and we're smashing boys back."