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'We are nowhere near our best' - Eddie Jones fires ominous warning
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Eddie Jones fired a warning to England's Six Nations rivals by insisting they were "nowhere near" their best despite beating Ireland 32-20.
The 2018 Grand Slam winners were outplayed in Dublin on Saturday as Henry Slade starred for a dominant England side who wrapped up a bonus-point triumph in style.
But even after halting Ireland's 12-match winning run at the Aviva Stadium, Jones claimed there was plenty more to come from his side.
"We're a team that's still growing, we're nowhere near our best and will play better than that," said the Australian.
"Some games are immensely physical, some are more tactical and we went in there and probably shaded them a little bit in that area.
"We know they're a top team but I thought our intensity, particularly in the first part, was outstanding."
The result suggests England are primed for a far more profitable campaign than last year's Six Nations, when they placed fifth, but Jones refuted any notion that it laid down a marker for the World Cup in Japan.
"These games have got nothing to do with the World Cup, these games are standalone games between a very good Ireland side and an improving England side and that's how we'll look at them," he said.
"We'll start worrying about where we are standing in the World Cup when we're 10 days out from the first game."
Next up for England is the visit of France to Twickenham and Jones is anticipating a tough challenge against a side who surrendered a 16-0 lead to lose their opener against Wales.
"If you take away the 14 points they gifted Wales, they would have won that game so we're not going to get too far ahead of ourselves. We know France is going to be a difficult game," he said.
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Latest Comments
Yeah me too. I think the Welsh have it in them to make it a contest in the first half. Give the boks' second stringers a headache. Disrupting lineouts is one area the welsh could cause problems. Bok lineouts have been subpar.
And then fronting up in the collisions and at the rucks. If the boks get the ascendancy there too early, it could be a hiding. Jaden hendrikse had a tough game against the Scots - who were very good at disrupting the boks flow. The welsh would have taken note of this i'm sure.
But the bok bench will finish the welsh off i'm afraid.
Go to commentsYes, certainly. As an AB fan happy to be included in that top 3 of "matches that are routinely decided by one score" now, we were well outside that for a few years.
They have not had enough games yet. You can't undo so many poor years just like that. Asking for miracles like SA losing is not the way to get back to number 1.
They might get there as those bad years filter out of the rankings but it's guarenteed to be great fun going back and forth with SA once that happens.
Admittedly Foster only really had one bad year (21/22 season), but that's more likely because COVID stopped a lot of tough games from being played, and effected the other countries they did play far more than themselves.
A real shame we both don't get to see it unfold first with our regions teams in SR!
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