His first international try offered Gordon Reid little solace for being part of a team that was humiliated at Twickenham on Saturday but the Glasgow Warriors prop still believes Scotland can become world leaders.

His words carry disturbing echoes of the claim made by Murrayfield bosses five years ago that winning the 2015 World Cup represented an achievable strategic target for a team that had failed to get out of the pool stages in 2011.

However Reid’s message was much more that of a player striving to be part of a group who are striving to be as good as they can possibly be.

“We’re professionals. We’re competitors. We’re here to win and do what England are doing now, winning game on game on game,” he said.

“That’s what we want do to. We want to reach those heights. That’s our target.

“We were fifth in the world going into the weekend, the highest we’ve ever been and we’re striving to be the best in the world. We want to be the best.”

Just how far they remain from that was drummed home at English rugby’s headquarters as their hosts rattled in seven tries in a 61-21 victory.

However Reid said that the Scotland squad must continue to believe in the processes that have seen a significant improvement in form under out-going head coach Vern Cotter.

“It’s important that we don’t let this set everything back,” he said.

“We’ve been on the back of a loss. We need to work on the negatives and do that quickly.”

The Scots had an outside chance of winning a first ever Six Nations title as they headed south, but with the death of that dream they must re-set their sights on what can still be achieved.

“Italy is a massive game, a must-win game for us. We need to get further up the table,” said Reid.

“The Calcutta Cup is out of the window now, the Championship is gone – England have got that now – but we can beat Italy and finish higher up.

“If we beat Italy, that’s the best we’ve done for a while in the Championship. Three wins, that’s the only thing left to play for – we do what we can to get that.

“We were good against Ireland and Wales. We need to play like that again, but, if we didn’t look back with regret on losing to France and England, there would be something wrong.”