Scotland, who won only once in last seasons tournament against Italy at Murrayfield, begin this years campaign against France in Edinburgh on February 5.

An out-of-sorts Ross missed the autumn international series due a lack of form with his club, but has been handed a recall by Hadden with he and Leeds now starting to find their feet.

The club are still bottom of the Premiership but have shown improvement and came close to booking a European Cup quarter-final place at the weekend after thumping Cardiff Blues 48-3.

Ross, Dan Parks, Phil Godman and Chris Paterson are among the contenders touted to start the competition at stand-off but the 27-year-old is pleased simply to be back among his international colleagues.

Ross said: I was disappointed to miss the autumn games but I wasnt playing particularly well so it gave me a chance to get my confidence and form back down at Leeds.

As a club, we werent playing with much confidence in November after losing seven out of seven at the start of the season.

We were going off in different patterns and not on the same lengths. So we had a few meetings to make sure we were singing from the same hymn sheet basically.

That helped everyone and we started playing as one team and that made things a lot easier.

Weve now had a couple of good performances and results and that has helped me.

Ross has avoided press attention over Haddens dilemma at number 10 after Parks failed to cover himself in glory during the autumn matches.

Now he wants to simply impress in training for the right to get in the squad to face the French.

He added: I dont see much of the press down south and whats going on but in the last two or three years when Ive got involved with Scotland its been when Ive been doing quite well for Leeds.

So I just focus on doing well there and then you hope things happen with Scotland.

Now were all looking forward to the start of this championship as there is a great excitement within the camp. The games cant come quickly enough.