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Eddie Jones hasn't taken long to aim remarks at France
By Ian Cameron
England head coach Eddie Jones hasn't taken long to start the mindgames with France and is already attempting to heap the pressure on Fabien Galthie's side ahead of Le Crunch in Paris.
His side have an unlikely bounce in their step despite a record loss to Ireland in Twickenham. England - who spent nearly the entire match with 14 players - put in a defiant performance against the Irish, even if they were eventually overrun by Andy Farrell's men.
If England lose to France in Saint-Denis, they could potentially finish fifth in the table again, a placing Jones' admits would be unacceptable and which triggered an RFU review into his performance in 2021.
The outspoken Australian has now turned his attention to Les Bleus, turning up the pressure notch by claiming the Grand Slam will 'be in their heads' this weekend.
“Wales lost the kicking in the first 20 and to beat France you have to out-kick them. That’s the first thing.
“Then you have to out-fight them around the ruck, which Wales did.”
“Wales are a really hard, tough team and we have to replicate them at the ruck and keep [scrumhalf] Antoine Dupont quiet,” said Jones. “For them to be playing for the Grand Slam, I remember going there in 2016 going for the Grand Slam and because it’s such a huge thing in European rugby, it does become something in their head,” the Australian said.
“And the only way we can make that live in their head a bit more is to play with such intensity and such ferociousness that we put them on the back foot. I think we’ve seen it in a few games.
“Look, France are a good team, don’t get me wrong. But like any team – even the great All Black teams winning at 90 percent, on your day if you can get stuck into them physically, take away their strengths, you can cause them problems.”
Jones claims that his England side dominated both Scotland and Ireland, despite the loss on the scoreboard.
“I think we’ve taken massive steps forward in this Six Nations. We dominated the game against Scotland but got beaten,” he said of a narrow 20-17 defeat at Murrayfield.
“We’ve dominated this game with 14 men, at times, and got beaten. And then we’ve had two good wins against Wales and Italy and we’ll have a good win against France.”
“Obviously our aim was to win the Championship. We’re disappointed we haven’t won the Championship but sometimes circumstances mean that maybe the results don’t mimic the performance. But that certainly catches up — the results will catch up.”
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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