Sawt Falasteen - Russell calls on Scotland to 'kick on' and beat big teams

The gifted Bath playmaker made his Scotland debut in 2014 and while he has enjoyed several Calcutta Cup wins against England, tournament success at Test level has proved elusive for the 34-year-old.

Scotland begin their November campaign with a Nations Championship match at home to New Zealand and still searching for a first win over the All Blacks since their inaugural clash in 1905.

And if Scotland are to succeed in next year's Six Nations, they will likely have to end a 10-year losing streak against Ireland.

Scotland, however, have climbed to sixth in the world rankings, although consistency remains frustratingly elusive for Gregor Townsend's men.

"There's three competitions over the next 12 months, we've got the Nations Championship the next four weeks, then Six Nations and obviously the World Cup," Russell said Wednesday.

"I think that's amazing to have the opportunity three times to potentially win something. Since I've been with Scotland we've never won anything, in terms of tournaments...

"We've put ourselves in a good position for the Nations Championship just now (second in the northern hemisphere table) with three tough games before the finals weekend (at Twickenham at the end of November).

Russell was encouraged by Scotland's performance in a 42-28 loss away to world champions South Africa in July but accepts the time for 'heroic defeats' has passed.

"We had some good performances in the summer and we just need to kick on from there and try and beat the top teams rather than running them close and losing," said Russell.

"We had a big win away from home against Argentina, then travelled to South Africa and ran them close.

"It was great to have a good performance but that was a game that we had enough chances where we definitely should have won that."

Russell, capped 95 times by Scotland, added: "We can't go off a big win against France to then losing to Ireland like we did in the Six Nations.

"We need to be stacking these wins one on top of the next. And in the summer we didn't manage to do that after Argentina. We need to be winning these games back to back to challenge to win tournaments."

X.Habash--SF-PST