Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
SIX NATIONS WE WANT TO BE GREATEST EVER
But boss Jones warns squad must learn to get along after Sarries’ disgrace
FORWARDS: Cowan-dickie, Curry, Dunn, Earl, Ewels, Genge, George, Hill, Itoje, Kruis, Launchbury, Lawes, Ludlam, Marler, Moon, Sinckler, Stuart, Underhill, M Vunipola, Williams BACKS: Daly, Devoto, Dingwall, Farrell, Ford, Furbank, Heinz, Joseph, May, Thorley, Tuilagi, Umaga, Watson, Youngs
EDDIE JONES has demanded his England players sort out their differences — then combine to become rugby’s “greatest ever team”.
Jones is determined to confront the Saracens salary cap scandal head-on rather than risk a rift between stars of the disgraced London club and the rest of his Six Nations squad.
He has told his players he wants the matter put to bed on day one of the warm-weather training camp in Portugal this week – ahead of their opening clash with France in Paris on February 2.
Head coach Jones said: “We need to get everything out on the table and sort it out, 100 per cent. We have players from potentially 12 different clubs – 12 different ideas of what is right and what is wrong.
“If players are angry about it, then say it. Say what you feel, get it out on the table. But, at the end of the day, there are 35 players that all want to play for England and their job is to get ready to play for England.”
Jones says every national team he has coached had problems that needed addressing – if not quite of the magnitude of the English champions being kicked out of the league for sustained cheating.
“Coaching Japan, the Panasonic players hated the Suntory players – hated each other,” he said. “We had to sort that out.”
Given that six of the seven Saracens stars in his 35-man squad are senior leaders, Jones knows he must lance this boil quickly. He also intends to deal with the other elephant in the room: England’s World Cup final horror show.
“It was a failure for us in the final, it still hurts and we’ve got to make sure we learn from it,” admitted the Australian. “I accept full responsibility for the performance. It was my fault. I didn’t prepare the team well enough, possibly I didn’t select well. “There are various things in hindsight I’d do differently, things that every day I go over one way or the other. I didn’t get it right, but I know how to fix it.”
So confident is he in his ability to do so that SIX times yesterday he declared that his ambition in the two years he has left on his contract is to make England “the greatest team the world of rugby has ever seen”.
To do that with a squad minus 10 players who went to the World Cup – including the injured trio of Billy Vunipola, Henry Slade and Jack Nowell (all left) – is a tall order.
He also has two new coaches – Simon Amor and Matt Proudfoot, and eight uncapped newbies, including Jacob Umaga, the 21-year-old nephew of former All Blacks captain Tana Umaga.
“We want to be remembered as a great team that has sustainable success,” Jones added. “We have touched it. We played a great game against the All Blacks at the World Cup, but we’ve only done that one.
“Imagine if a team does that 80 per cent of the time.”