England ‘a damp paper bag’
Eddie Jones was in the cross-hairs as his highly-touted England team was taken apart by a young and ambitious French side in Paris.
On the back of a runners-up finish at last year’s World Cup in Japan, Jones was talking big about the potential of his team to be the Liverpool of rugby and set new standards for the game.
That all came apart in a shock Six Nations opener in Paris yesterday, with France winning 24-17 and the barbs coming out for Jones and his team.
‘‘When Eddie Jones talked recently about England looking to become the greatest team the world has ever seen, this was not the start point he was envisaging,’’ The Guardian match report started.
‘‘The World Cup finalists were about as irresistibly brutal as a damp paper bag for the first hour of a wet Sunday afternoon in Paris and were joyfully ripped apart by a French team not so much revitalised as reborn.’’
France led 24-0 approaching the hour mark before England managed to salvage anything.
‘‘Here was another savage disappointment for anyone lulled into a false sense of security by their remarkable semifinal beating of New Zealand.
‘‘In many ways it was a triumph less for Parisian design as the no-nonsense ways of Wigan. This was Shaun Edwards’ first game since being invited to join Fabien Galthie’s new-look management team as defence coach and his fingerprints were all over this spiky and emotionally super-charged performance by les Bleus.’’
The Guardian said France had made easy metres against an English defence that resembled Swiss cheese there were so many holes present.
The Telegraph was just as merciless. ‘‘Jonny May’s solo masterclass saved England from humiliation in Paris as one of the worst performances of the Eddie Jones era put a large dent in their Six Nations title ambitions,’’ The Telegraph report started, noting that Jones had questioned how France’s young team would cope with the pressure, but it was his players who looked powerless as events unfolded around them.
‘‘Jones had promised France ‘brutal physicality’ but instead it was his rattled World Cup runners-up who fell victim to a ferocious onslaught as words that had caused controversy on this side of The Channel came back to haunt him.
‘‘. . . England will lick their wounds as they come to terms with the possibility their World Cup final rout by South Africa last autumn may have left deeper scars than initially expected.
‘‘For the first time since 1988 they were held scoreless at the interval in a championship match and it is hard to imagine a worse start as they were breached in the sixth minute by Vincent Rattez.’’
The Times said England were ‘‘too limited and too late’’ with their fruitless rally.
‘‘For an hour, they looked more like the team that had lost the World Cup final than the outstanding team that had got them there. England’s problems were bountiful . . . they were guilty of a horrendous accumulation of mistakes.’’
The Daily Mail joined the brutal analysis of the English effort, saying: ‘‘Not great. Not great at all. England’s mission to launch a new era with the target of becoming the greatest team in the history of rugby collapsed in a heap at the Stade de France.
‘‘The national team had come to the French capital convinced that they could ignite another Six Nations title challenge with a dominant performance, but they were utterly eclipsed by their cross-channel rivals.’’