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Watch - Eddies Jones' loses it during England's sloppy display
By Christopher Devine
Eddie Jones is confident England will deliver a much-improved display against Australia next weekend, after they struggled for fluency in a 21-8 win over Argentina at Twickenham.
Tries from Nathan Hughes and Semesa Rokoduguni helped England to victory on Saturday, but Jones was clearly frustrated during the second period, when television cameras captured a foul-mouthed outburst from the head coach.
Jones was much more relaxed by the time he addressed the media in a post-match news conference and highlighted England's lack of match action since the Six Nations, aside from a brief tour of Argentina that saw the squad severely weakened by British and Irish Lions call-ups.
"We were off the pace a little bit but I thought there were some things we did really well," said Jones, who described the match as a "grindathon".
"The reality is we haven't played a game together since March and we've had players coming back from the [British and Irish] Lions who've done two training sessions with us, so our fluency and our understanding wasn't there, which is understandable.
"You need time together, so we'll be so much better next week.
"We want Australia to bring their best game and see where we're at. These games are about finding out where we're at.
"We've got a very clear vision of how we want to play against Australia. It should be fun."
Owen Farrell - rested on Saturday along with Saracens team-mate Maro Itoje - appears highly likely to return against the Wallabies.
Asked if that would be the case, a laughing Jones replied: "Well, he did a great job as water boy. You should never do a good job at the job you're given, so he could be a good water boy next week."
England could well be without Mike Brown, though, after the full-back landed head-first on the ground following a contest for a high ball with Joaquin Tuculet, who was yellow-carded.
"He's good," said Jones of Brown. "He'll have to do return-to-play [protocols]. He was obviously hit pretty heavily. We lose a player for the whole game, they lose a player for 10 minutes."
Pressed on whether a yellow card was the right sanction for Tuculet, Jones added: "I don't know. I'm not a referee."
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Latest Comments
Italians defended well. Luckily the scrums went well for the ABs.
Go to commentsYou were 'valuing' the players by you saying "they are not greats" though, I was pointing out another reason why they are greats, inside the team I mean (which is more important to selections on the pitch stuff).
Someone like TJ would be bitterly disappointed he didn't play on this end of year tour. He is still good enough to come on in that France game and ensure the team get the victory (with regards to how well Ratima had been playing). At the very least this is a 'sorry you didn't get that chance' offering, he's not here to get token farewell games, he will be playing to try and prove that he should have been on the pitch last week.
The other decision to play your best over the future is really personal though so can agree with your reasoning. Just sharing a slightly different perspective. I'll have to check the ratings and see how they went.
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