London: You may think it unnecessary for Martin Johnson to stress that England's final pool game against Scotland tomorrow will be bigger than any Six Nations match. What he is trying to do is impart knowledge that his cohorts will not grasp fully until they have the benefit of hindsight.

Six Nations games, unless they are dramatic Grand Slam deciders like the 1990 game at Murrayfield, fade into the past, indistinguishable, as nothing turns on them. Games in a World Cup are part of a campaign for the ultimate prize and will feature in the archives of countries' triumphs. With each successive World Cup come the replays of what has gone before and games take on a permanence that does not attach to those in the Six or Tri-Nations.

For this reason the more apposite comparison with tomorrow's match is the 1991 World Cup semi-final at Murrayfield — and that game needs to be seen in the context of what had gone before. Scotland topped their group to earn a home quarter-final, in which they beat Western Samoa 28-6. The semi-final against England was a step up in intensity, though emboldened by 1990 they rightly believed they could beat us. England had lost 18-12 to New Zealand and beaten the French at Parc des Princes 19-10. The latter is, of all the internationals I played, the most vivid in my memory.

Many lessons

It would take 10,000 words to describe it properly, but the French depiction, "La Guerre", is as good as you can do using just two. On that Saturday night we flew to Jersey, where we were joined by wives and girlfriends for two nights. The release of emotion after the brutality turned the occasion into one of epic party

We had been taught many lessons by our defeat in 1990 and we focused more on how Scotland would play and their individual threats. Things like making history, destiny and so on were not relevant, because the winner won nothing more than the chance to take the Webb Ellis trophy.

It was important to try and take as much of the emotion out of the fixture as possible, the reverse of what the Scots wanted. In truth, we bored the crowd into relative silence by disciplined, tight play that restricted mistakes which could benefit Scots. Even though the result was close, 9-6, I didn't feel we would lose, unlike the increasing panic in the second half of the 1990 game. Much has been made of the penalty missed by Hastings which would have taken Scotland into a 9-6 lead, but we had the advantage of a stiff breeze and I felt that further chances would have come, as indeed they did with Andrew's winning dropped-goal.

Tomorrow's game is similar in that England should win, but will not do so unless they get to grips with the specific threats posed by Scotland. They have to dictate the pace and not allow Scotland to draw them into an unstructured game where the Scottish back row can create mayhem.

Though form suggests England's should win, the enormity of the occasion may make it a nervous, error-strewn game, in which stupidity costs more than imprecision.