Eddie Jones salutes the late Dominici and Maradona, lauds Nigel Owens' weekend milestone
England boss Eddie Jones has offered his condolences to the family of the late Christophe Dominici, spoken about the impact the late footballer Diego Maradona, and paid tribute to rugby referee Nigel Owens who this weekend becomes the first referee to have taken charge of 100 Test matches.
Jones began his latest England team selection media conference with an opening statement on late France great Dominici, who tragically took his own life on Tuesday at the age of 48.
He followed it with reference to Owens' refereeing milestone and then took a question on Maradona, the legendary Argentina footballer who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 60.
"I would just like to send my condolences to the Dominici family from England rugby," began Jones. "He was a fantastic player. I remember him vividly, a will-o'-the-wisp type player who played superbly for France. We feel for the family.
"On a brighter note, I would just like to send congratulations to Nigel Owens on his 100 Test match. It's a great achievement for a referee and he has done it will a lot of colour, a lot of humour and certainly added to the game so congratulations Nigel. We look forward to having you again, mate."
Switching to Maradona, Jones added: "He's one of those guys who captures the sports world. He was an incredible player. I can remember watching him closely in that '86 World Cup and the influence he had on the game.
"It's one of those great sports stories. Obviously a lot of tragedy in it as well, but for a guy to come from the slums of Argentina to be the best player in the world and provide such entertainment for a long period of time and then unfortunately towards the end it was a difficult life for him but yeah, everyone got great memories from him."
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I think we need to get innovative with the new laws.
Now red cards are only 20 minutes, Razor should send Finau on a head hunting mission to hospitalise their 10 with a shoulder to the chops.
Give the conspiracy theorists a win.
England played well enough to win but couldnt score when they needed to and couldnt defend a couple of X-Factor moments from Telea which was ultimately the difference. They needed to hold the ball more and make the AB's make more tackles. Territorially they were good for the first 60. Defending their lead and playing pragmatic rugby in the last 20 was silly. The AB's always had the potential to come back. England still have a long way to go, definite progress would have been shown had they won but it seems they are still stuck where they were shortly after the six nations and their tour to NZ
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