Put the rugby boot on the other foot
coaches. He would have been disappointed that his English players were so slow in adapting to Italy’s unorthox tactic, named the Fox, by rival coach O’Shea.
Jones, who has now overseen a streak of 17 victories by England — one fewer than the All Blacks’ record of 18 — would have felt that he had turned England from a traditionally robotic forward-oriented team to an outfit who can play any style.
This performance suggested that’s not the case. Jones’ senior players were reduced to asking referee Romain Poite how to handle the situation.
“What do we do?” loose forward James Haskell asked. “I can’t say,” Poite quite rightly replied. “I’m the referee, not a coach.”
Later, O’Shea revealed that the tactic was dreamed up following his team’s Six Nations defeat to Ireland.
“We are not inventing anything,” he said. “If there’s a tackle, there’s no offside. We can go there. We never played the No 9. We just occupied space.
“We didn’t just dream this up on Friday night. A lot of planning went into it. We wanted the ball. The purpose of defence is to get the ball.
“We came here to play. Just remember, we attacked off scrums, we kicked into the corner, we did not come here to roll over.
“We challenged people’s minds and a lot of credit to [assistant coach] Brendan Venter for doing what he did. Look at the number of turnovers we got today.”
After the heavy loss to Ireland, O’Shea was determined to try something different. Far from being happy to turn up and get their lot, Italy have become innovators with the potential to change the game. That has to be good for rugby.
O’Shea said: “We have a few other animals up our sleeves as well, not just the Fox.”