The England full-back Ben Foden maintains that the cracks which appeared in the England squad during last year's World Cup have been plastered over this month and that Scotland will face a united group of players at Murrayfield on Saturday.
Foden is at 26 one of the senior players in the squad, but it is only three years since he made his international debut. The Northampton player says that last week's training camp in Leeds showed the immediate impact the interim management of Stuart Lancaster, Graham Rowntree and Andy Farrell had made on the group.
"It is an environment people want to be in," Foden says. "There is no divide in the team – we are all in the same race together. The management have brought a real energy and the whole mentality has changed. Stuart has been vocal about the culture he is trying to create and players are hungry to pull on the white shirt.
"Before, there was a little bit of a divide between the young players coming through and the guys who had been there, the old school. It was different and with the old regime it was very meeting dominant. We used to sit and analyse a lot, talking through moves and looking back at training.
"The gameplan now is going to be simple. I much prefer that. I like to see things for myself rather than watch them on a TV screen. I have always been an instinctive player – play what you see. You have to have a little bit of structure but it is exciting when I talk to Stuart and Andy about what sort of gameplan we are going to have in the backs. They see the wings we have as dangerous strike runners and they are designing plays to utilise our strengths."
There were complaints from the management during the World Cup that some players were too concerned with talking to their agents about commercial deals than focusing on the tournament in New Zealand.
The coach Farrell says: "People talk about David Beckham and all his commercial stuff, but everybody knows that he is the first at training and the last out.
"His focus has always been about football first and that is what all the greats have done. As long as you don't get distracted with the show that goes with it then you have got a good career ahead of you.
"It is all about your attitude. Do you want to be as good a rugby player and as good a team player as you can be? If you have been in a commercial deal or if opening an envelope is what you like more than rugby, then your career at the top is not going to last very long."
