Winger Paul Sampson led the way with two touchdowns - the first with barely a minute on the clock.

But Newcastle cup hero David Walder also had a fine evening, coming away with 16 points.

Wells said: "I think perhaps that first score helped, but given the weather and everything else that's been going on, I thought our lads did a very good job.

"Everybody during the course of the game made some really positive contributions. Everybody did something that made us play as well as we did tonight.

"We were perhaps fortunate that we'd seen Scotland's game against Wales. Okay there were some times when it didn't go quite right, but we were able to play the game we wanted to."

Scotland manager Rob Flockhart conceded the visitors were a poor second best. He admitted that England had been impressive but felt his side made it easier or them than it should have been.

He said: "It is disappointing, very disappointing indeed. We played very well against Wales but tonight we made silly mistakes.

"I thought England played very well but the first half was very patchy. We gave them the ball too often when they had no right to get it.

"The line-out didn't work and we couldn't get into it. When we did we were trying to play catch-up and that was no good at that stage.

"Even 25 minutes into the game we could have got back but we kept making basic errors."