Jonny Gray: Scotland not concerned about vociferous Welsh crowd

Jonny Gray insists Scotland will not freeze amid the frenzied atmosphere at the Principality Stadium.

The Dark Blues lock is looking forward to his first taste of the recently-renamed home of Welsh rugby.

A sell-out 74,000 crowd is expected for Saturday's RBS 6 Nations clash and 21-year-old Gray expects to see the passion of the home fans wash down on to the players on the field.

The last time the Scots visited Cardiff, the wild atmosphere became the soundtrack to a nightmare afternoon as they crashed to a record 51-3 defeat.

But Gray is not worried about the noise levels being cranked up.

He said: "I've not played at the Millennium before but I remember watching loads of games there on TV while growing up.

"The boys always talk about the atmosphere there and you can see from the TV pictures how special a place is.

"You can hear from the national anthems how passionate the Welsh fans are so we can expect to face that again on Saturday.

"But that's not something we worry about. We will just be going down to focus on ourselves and our game plan."

Scotland are hoping to bounce back from defeat in their Championships opener.

The 15-9 loss to England at Murrayfield last Saturday has prompted a bout of national soul searching, with the encouraging signs of last year's World Cup now overshadowed by gloomy fears for the rest of the tournament.

The players held a post-mortem earlier this week but Gray insists the exercise was not about pointing the finger of blame - but rather about making sure the same old mistakes are not repeated.

"We looked at the game and obviously everyone was disappointed," the Glasgow second-rower said. "We looked at what we did wrong and we made a lot of mistakes in crucial areas. Credit to England, they took full advantage.

"It was a hard one to take. When you pull on that jersey you just want to do everyone proud.

"We're just gutted we couldn't get the result.

"But I think the reaction has been great. We trained well today and hopefully we can carry that on. We were very honest with each other on Monday and we all said to each other we need to get better moving on.

"There was no blame. It was about getting everyone together and moving forward."