EDDIE ON DEFENSIVE AFTER ENGLAND SLUMP
EDDIE JONES has been forced to defend his position as England head coach amid mounting pressure after the national side’s worst Six Nations finish. The dire 32-18 defeat by Ireland condemned England to fifth place in the championship table, with a worse points difference than in the turbulent 2018 campaign when they also only out-ranked Italy. Asked if he is still the right man to take
England forward, Jones said: ‘That’s not the question at the moment. That’s for other people to answer, not for me to answer.’ When pressed if he is convinced he can do a good job, Jones added: ‘Yes, 100 per cent.’ And has the calamitous landmark of defeats against the other three home nations for the first time in 45 years made Jones question himself? ‘No, not at all,’ he insisted. ‘We’re gutted, but this team was always going to go through a period like this following the World Cup. In international rugby, you get to a certain stage and success makes you a « bit weak. You need to fight through
that. It’s hard to be at the top of the tree all the time. And so the team goes through cycles of success and cycles of failure and I think that’s a normal part of sport. ‘I knew that a tough period was coming, because we’ve had a good run — we’ve won games that we probably shouldn’t have won. And you get on the other side of the ledger where you lose games that you should have won and it becomes bloody tough. We’re in that period now. ‘This is a mucky period where you know there is change coming and you are just trying to get the timing right.’ World Cup winning coach Sir Clive Woodward was scathing about England, telling Sportsmail: ‘This is now very serious with nowhere near enough scrutiny from the RFU concerning an England team that has become a cosy club. ‘They were awful against the Scots, awful against Ireland and not much better against Wales. ‘And the failings were exactly the same. This England team are going nowhere playing like this and any talk of progress is delusional. If you disregard Italy, England are the only Six Nations side going backwards.’ Addressing the criticism, Jones added: ‘Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I’m sure they’re angry. We expect to win and to play better than we did. The fans have got the right to be disappointed.’ Senior England players attempted to rally round their under-fire head coach, while accepting their share of responsibility. Maro Itoje said: ‘I genuinely believe we’ve got one of the best coaches in the world. He’s a truly special coach. Eddie can’t play the game for us.’ Mako Vunipola echoed that sentiment, adding: ‘As senior players, we have to take full responsibility. The coaches and Eddie always put us in the position to win games. It’s then on to us out there to execute that and we haven’t done that well enough or consistently enough.’