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'Ireland are the best side in the world' - Jones
By Christopher Devine
"Ireland are the best side in the world" - that's according to England head coach Eddie Jones, who revealed his 35-man England Six Nations squad this morning.
England open their campaign in Dublin on February 2 against an Ireland side who completed the Grand Slam at Twickenham last year.
"Ireland are the best side in the world," Jones added. "They are a very well coached and drilled side and have particular things they do well in the game.
"To beat Ireland, we need to compete brutally in all the contest areas of the game.
Jones left out co-captain Dylan Hartley has been left out of England's training squad for the game in Dublin.
Owen Farrell will therefore skipper the team, while head coach Eddie Jones has included four uncapped players in the squad - OIlie Thorley, Dan Robson, Jack Singleton and Ben Earl.
England are boosted by the return of Billy Vunipola, Joe Launchbury, Mako Vunipola and Ellis Genge for the first time since last year's tour of South Africa, while Dan Cole, Jack Clifford and Ollie Devoto are also included after long absences.
"Unfortunately, Dylan won’t be available for the Ireland game so we won't take him to Portugal [for a training camp] but we are hopeful he will be back later in the championship," explained Jones.
"Owen will be captain by himself and he will certainly have great support from a number of senior players."
"We are very happy with the squad and have a number of players who have come back from long-term injury.
"We are looking forward to getting across to Portugal and having a good 10-day preparation for the Ireland game."
England squad:
Forwards: Jack Clifford, Dan Cole, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Tom Curry, Ben Earl, Ellis Genge, Jamie George, Nathan Hughes, Maro Itoje, George Kruis, Joe Launchbury, Courtney Lawes, Ben Moon, Brad Shields, Kyle Sinckler, Jack Singleton, Billy Vunipola, Mako Vunipola, Harry Williams, Mark Wilson.
Backs: Chris Ashton, Mike Brown, Joe Cokanasiga, Elliot Daly, Ollie Devoto, Owen Farrell (captain), George Ford, Jonny May, Jack Nowell, Dan Robson, Henry Slade, Ben Te'o, Ollie Thorley, Manu Tuilagi, Ben Youngs.
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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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