The Scottish squad have spent a lot of time this week talking about their desire to show greater attacking flair in their final RBS 6 Nations game of the season against Italy on Saturday after only managing one try in their previous four matches.

However, full-back Southwell insists the players must be able to walk before they can run.

“I don’t think there was ever any danger of us getting carried away with ourselves,” said the 27-year-old Edinburgh star ahead of the wooden spoon decider in Rome.

“To put it in perspective, all we have to do is look at the Six Nations table.

“We have won one out of four games, we’ve been disappointing in three matches in a row, and although we have put in one performance that has given us all a bit of a lift, we are still near the bottom of the table despite starting the tournament believing that we could end up somewhere near the top.

“We’ll hopefully get some nice weather so we can play some good rugby and score a few tries against Italy, but we’re not going to get over-excited.

“As we have already seen in this tournament, the Italians are a pretty handy outfit - especially at home - so we’ve got to stick to our game plan. We’ve got to get our structure right and get our basics right.

“We need to play with an integrated game plan. You want to be able to entertain the supporters, but if you look at any team in the world which has a reputation for playing both successful and attractive rugby, you will see that they only start throwing the ball about once they have broken the gain line. That’s what we’ll be looking to do this weekend."

Southwell’s feet might both be planted firmly on the ground, but that does not mean he did not take a great deal of pleasure from last weekend’s remarkable win.

However, his joy had more to do with the boost to morale the result gave the team, rather than any deep-rooted resentment he feels towards Scotland’s oldest rivals.

“Everyone in Scotland wants to see us beat England, there’s a whole lot of historical and cultural reasons for that,” said the London-born full-back.

“But from the players point of view, the real bonus was that we got the better of a team which reached the World Cup final last year and has achieved an enormous amount of success in recent years.

“Even though the weather meant it was never going to be a carnival of running rugby, we played with the sort of purpose and control that you need to create a platform for the backs to do their stuff.

“In the first two or three games, we really weren’t causing the opposition the sort of problems we should have been causing, but now we have something to build on.

“As everyone says in sport, momentum is crucial, and this is an opportunity to generate some real momentum going into our summer tour, when we have two massive games against Argentina.

“We need to get into the position where we have a winning mentality, and then we can really look at developing our game plan."