No plan from Eddie, just soundbites
The World Cup, eddie Jones, never tired of telling us, is a fouryear cycle. France’s has begun. england’s stalled on the grid.
And no wonder. england have no coach for 2023 as yet and, therefore, little by way of vision.
In place of a plan are soundbites. Jones is preparing the greatest team in the world, the best in history, the most brutal this callow French team will ever have seen — he is Jurgen Klopp, his players are Liverpool.
except the only team that went 22 points clear yesterday was France — 24 ahead, actually, following captain Charles Ollivon’s second converted try on 55 minutes.
That england clawed 17 points back from there and claimed a losing bonus point with literally the last kick of the match, a penalty from Owen Farrell, was the second biggest surprise of the day. The biggest was the difference between these teams at half-time when France led 17-0.
It was 1988 when england last failed to score in the first half of a Five or Six Nations game. That year, they did so twice — against Wales in defeat and Ireland in victory.
This was altogether more alarming given the youth of the French team and england’s status as World Cup finalists three months ago.
Farrell dismissed talk of hangovers from that tournament but no losing World Cup finalists from europe have won this championship in its sixteam format and all have lost two matches in the campaign. england are one down already.
As spirited as england’s comeback was late on, featuring two excellent tries from Jonny May, it was hard to see much of a path forward.
Individual brilliance more than collective structure made the scoreline appear competitive, while George Furbank — Jones’ sole new boy — had a game to forget.
Conditions were difficult but they will be in international rugby while it remains a winter sport, and his equivalent in the French team, Anthony Bouthier, had no such teething issues. Bouthier, now with
Montpellier, was playing in France’s fourth tier for an amateur club not long ago. Yesterday, he made a kick from south of his own try line to alleviate pressure that went out near england’s 22. It was quite magnificent. If he could do that in the NFL, he’d be first pick in the next draft.
The best performers were all in blue. Scrum half Antoine Dupont, No 8 Gregory Alldritt, Bouthier and full back Teddy Thomas.
It was hoped France would be competitive this Six Nations, having become skittish and inconsistent even by their standards, but what emerged here was more definitive — the beginnings of a plan.
Raphael Ibanez, manager, and Fabien Galthie, coach, allied with the mighty defensive mind of Shaun edwards, have their eyes on a home World Cup in 2023.
And england? Is Jones looking forward, is he still healing the trauma of a losing World Cup final and how much of what he said in the build-up to this game was bluster — more Fast eddie spiel to cover the deficiencies in this group and the damage of the defeat in Yokohama?
Jones (below) spoke of brutality before this game but if his ill-judged rhetoric was intended to intimidate France, it inspired them. If its motive was to embolden england, his players shrank.
And it didn’t sit well in a country where too many young men have lost their lives playing this sport of late. Some words have a far stronger meaning across borders. We think of brutal as meaning rough or unpleasant. A brutal match would be one that is demanding physically.
The French think of brutality as savagely violent. They read Jones’ words and thought the english were coming to Paris to beat up their young team — and on
Brexit weekend, too. No wonder the atmosphere before the game seemed even more charged than usual, no wonder there were some French tackles of uncompromising aggressiveness that drew mighty cheers. Seeing one of england’s brutes-in-chief, Manu Tuilagi, leave the field after 16 minutes must have heartened them no end, too.
Jones felt observers did not give France enough credit but that isn’t true. France were immense, particularly in the first half and throughout when containing england shy of the try-line.
Yet equally important was the juxtaposition of these teams — one moving forward having taken a critical look at its shortcomings in Japan, the other still unsure of its direction, unsure of its future, unsure even of the identity of its World Cup coach.
It is this that may eat away at england across the next two years, just as the suspicion the Pep Guardiola era at Manchester City is drawing to a close seems to be affecting his team, despite his protests.
Jones used to reference Guardiola all the time. Now it is Jurgen Klopp. Yet this was more like the time Liverpool turned up at Wembley under Roy evans in white suits and were played off the park by Manchester United.
england’s coach and his players now have less than seven days to get this performance — the first half at least — out of their system. Jones spoke of going to Murrayfield ‘to have a bit of fun’ but it was another of those flip remarks that are easily seen through.
Murrayfield is rarely fun for an english rugby team short of confidence. Jones would have been more realistic had he channelled the spirit of Sir Alf Ramsey arriving north of the border.
‘Welcome to Scotland,’ announced a party of local journalists at the station. ‘You must be f****** joking,’ he said and kept walking.