There should be plenty for Huw Jones to be happy about as we pass the mid-point of the 2025 Six Nations but the overriding feeling is one of frustration. He notched his fourth try of the championship in the agonising defeat by England at the weekend and the centre now holds jointly the record for being Scotland’s all-time leading try-scorer in the Six Nations. Jones, 31, and fellow Twickenham scorer Duhan van der Merwe are tied with Stuart Hogg on 16 championship tries and the former’s performances across the tournament are sure to have caught the eye of Andy Farrell, the Lions head coach. Unfortunately, the efforts of Jones and van der Merwe in west London on Saturday turned out to be in vain as England overturned Scotland’s first-half dominance to win 16-15, scuppering any prospect of a title challenge in the process. Instead, with two games remaining, Scotland are almost certainly playing for the minor places. It’s Wales at Murrayfield up next, on March 8, followed by France in Paris a week later. Jones agreed that the Welsh match fell into the “must win” category. “Absolutely,” he said. “Every game is a must-win. And we're gutted about the result on Saturday. We are really proud of the performance because we went down there, scored three tries, did enough to win. It's just disappointing. “That Wales game is obviously now huge. Two games to go, and I think if we can play well, like we did on Saturday, then we've got a chance of salvaging something in the Six Nations. But we've got to bounce back from this.” Regardless of how well Scotland play against Wales and France, the chances of them ending their 26-year title drought are now negligible. You’ll get odds of 750/1 around Townsend’s side lifting the Six Nations trophy and Jones admitted that another “salvage” operation is about as much as they can hope for following defeats by Ireland and England. “It is really frustrating,” said the Glasgow Warriors player. “I don't know what else to say. You get one shot at each team in this competition, and if you don't win that game, it becomes very difficult after that, I think. “We don't want this to derail us. We've got a week off to regroup and get our messaging and connect and all that, and then a big two weeks after that. But yeah, it's two losses on the bounce. It's tough, but we can still get something out of this competition.” Three wins from five is the best Scotland have managed in the Six Nations era and it would be a big ask to match that this season. Wales at Murrayfield will be tricky enough but the final game in Paris is likely to see the Scots go up against a title-chasing France side. “We want to win, and go into every game believing we can win,” said Jones. “We've won there [in Paris] before. We're not looking ahead to that right now. Obviously, Wales would be the focus, but like I said, if we can go and win our last two games, that would be brilliant.” A sore Achilles meant Jones had to come off with 16 minutes remaining at Twickenham and his replacement, Stafford McDowall, sparked the move which led to van der Merwe’s late try which gave Finn Russell a conversion to win the game only for the stand-off to pull his effort wide. Jones is confident he will be fit to face Wales. “I hope so,” he said. “We've obviously got this fallow week now, so get the physios to have a good look at it and get a treatment planned around this week. “My Achilles was a bit sore. It just really tightened up and it felt like I couldn't sprint, so they brought me off and then Stafford set up a try, so that was actually a good decision! “That was great to see. We actually ran that play in the first half and I got hit quite hard. It was great to see him go through on it.” “I've had issues with it before [but] I've not actually done anything bad to it,” added Jones. “It feels not great at the moment, but thankfully it's not ruptured or anything.” Jones is in a rich vein of form and Scotland will be hoping the extra week will give him enough time to recover. Only France’s quicksilver winger Louis Bielle-Biarrey has scored more tries than him in this season’s Six Nations. Jones opened the campaign with a hat-trick in the 31-19 win over Italy and although he was unable to add to the tally in the loss to Ireland, he was delighted to hear that his try against England moved him to joint top of the charts on Scotland's all-time Six Nations list. “I didn't know that,” he admitted in the bowels of Twickenham on Saturday evening. “It means a lot. I like scoring tries. It's good for the team, so if I can do that for the team, if that's what I bring, then that's great.” With 16 of his 23 Scotland tries coming in Six Nations games, he has proven himself to be a man for the big occasion and his feats are sure to have caught the eye of Farrell but Jones is not thinking about the Lions tour right now. “I mean, there's a lot of rugby to be played before that,” he said. “I think probably every home nations player is probably trying to get themselves into the picture for that. “So, yeah, I mean, you've just got to try and play as well as you can every week.” - Don't miss a moment of this year's Six Nations with The Scotsman's special 50 per cent discount offer for three months