DAN PARKS is confident Scotland can bounce back quickly from their Calcutta Cup mauling by England.

The Scots are licking their wounds after a 42-20 defeat in their RBS 6 Nations opener at Twickenham, but fly-half Parks insists there are plenty of positives to take into Saturday's home game against Wales.

In an encouraging opening, Parks twice lofted the ball over Jason Robinson's head to set up the position for Edinburgh team-mate Simon Taylor to poach a try from England's line-out close to the line.

Parks commented: "It wasn't one of our better days but, for 50 minutes, I thought we competed really well and did a lot of good things.

"As it turned out, it got away from us. From 17-13, all of a sudden it was 37-13 and bit of a knock to us, but we scored a late try and got a bit of pride back. There's still plenty there, we've got a lot to work with."

Indeed, replacement Rob Dewey was Scotland's other try scorer and captain Chris Paterson kicked four goals from five attempts.

Coach Frank Hadden was livid over the video replay official's decision to award Wilkinson his try and also claimed Robinson's first score was a 50-50 call, but he was able to draw some comfort from his team's performance.

"Obviously we're very disappointed with the outcome," he said. "Having said that, I thought we gave as good as we got for a good part of the game.

"You just need everything to go your way to get the sort of outcome we were after and it was obvious things weren't going for us."

Tournament favourites Ireland got their campaign off to a flyer when they defeated Wales 9-19 at the Millennium Stadium. France hammered Italy 39-3.