WAR OF WORDS AS ENGLAND WIN UGLY
Jones accuses Italy of ‘parking the bus’, but O’Shea hits back: He’s just angry they didn’t beat us by 70 points
EDDIE JONES urged England fans to demand their money back after his team emerged redfaced but triumphant from Twickenham.
He also threatened to quit rugby unless blazers change the law which allowed Italy to bamboozle the Six Nations leaders for an hour yesterday.
“If that’s rugby, I’m going to retire,” he raged after the supposed whipping boys embarrassed England with a tactic Jones’ men took more than half the afternoon to work out.
“We saw a Trevor Chappell game of rugby today,” said the Red Rose head coach, referring to the 1981 cricket match when the Australian bowled the final ball underarm to prevent New Zealand getting the six required to win.
“In football they say ‘park the bus’. I don’t know what they (Italy) had, but it was bigger than a bus. That’s not rugby and, if you paid for your ticket, ask for your money back.”
What Italy did was not to put numbers into the breakdown, which meant it did not become a ruck. What that meant was there was no offside line, so Italian players flooded both sides of the ball.
It was brilliantly inventive by the Italian coaching team of Conor O’Shea, Mike Catt and Brendan Venter. But went down like a cup of cold sick with Jones.
“I don’t want to be involved in those sort of games,” he said after England had to overcome a 10-5 half-time deficit to beat the 50/1 outsiders and rack up a 17th consecutive win.
“At one stage we were going to try that with Japan, but decided against it because we thought it was against the spirit of the game.
“If you think it’s smart, fantastic. I don’t. I’d rather pick up my stumps, put them in the kit bag and go home.” Italy boss O’Shea (above right) was incensed by criticism of his team and launched a fierce counter-attack as the sun set on one of Twickenham’s strangest days. He accused Jones (above left) and rugby as a whole of disrespecting his proud but struggling rugby nation. “He wanted 70, he wanted to take us to the cleaners. Is that respect?” O’Shea fumed. “We beat South Africa and it is a terrible South Africa side – we do something different, you can’t do that.
“We do something that’s been done by Toulouse and Australia, and we do it and it’s wrong. Why always us? Why?
“I am sick and tired of people having a pop and having a go. If people think we’re just going to lie down and take it, they’re wrong.”
O’Shea’s fury was understandable. All week there had been demands for relegation to be introduced to get Italy out of the championship.
For a half they silenced the sniping. With 20 minutes left they still trailed by only two points.
Of course England didn’t like it. But that’s their problem, not the Italians’.