Jones dreams big for England

Eddie Jones is ready to meet the curse of the World Cup finalists head on as he strives to turn England into ‘‘the greatest team rugby has ever seen’’.

England open their Six Nations campaign against France in Paris this weekend – their first game since losing the World Cup final to South Africa last year.

Jones is desperate to avoid the fate of the four previous runnersup, who all went into decline in the following World Cup cycle.

Since 2003, every beaten finalist has failed to progress past the quarterfinals stage of the following global tournament.

‘‘There has been a decline and in some teams a massive decline in year one,’’ Jones told BBC Sport. ‘‘Some of the reasons we have come up with are: a) they have failed to cope with the expectation of being a top team, or b) they don’t have that relentless, forensic search for how to get better because they feel like they have made it.

‘‘We want to make sure we understand what the potential threats are, and then we can deal with them.’’

Jones felt some teams had fallen into the trap of becoming comfortable with what they had achieved, but insisted there had been no sign of that with his current squad.

He said there was a ‘‘relentless desire’’ from the players to improve and he’s set them an audacious target.

‘‘But what I’m seeing with the players is an absolute desire to be a much better team.

‘‘We want to be the greatest team the game of rugby has ever seen. That’s a big dream but why not go for it? We are quite capable of getting there,’’ Jones told BBC Sport.

England travel to the Stade de France to tackle a new-look French team on Monday (NZ time), with new coach Fabien Galthie selecting a host of rookies.