A Baby Rhino toughs it out for Jones

Alex Spink

EDDIE JONES silenced calls for his sacking by marshalling England to an ugly – but priceless – victory at storm-hit Murrayfield.

Days after World Cup winner Kyran Bracken demanded his removal, Jones found himself 10 minutes from the nightmare scenario of Scotland lifting the Calcutta Cup for a third straight year.

It was then the Australian’s bold gamble of loading his bench with forwards paid dividends as 18-stone prop Ellis Genge was sent on and showed the world why he is nicknamed Baby Rhino.

The Leicester star had been on the pitch for little more than 10 minutes when he picked up the ball and powered over the Scottish line.

His intervention broke the stalemate in what was a dire spectacle and rekindled England’s title hopes by assuring there would be no repeat of last year’s 38-38 draw at Twickenham.

That had been a feast of rugby. This was the polar opposite but Jones was not bothered.

“Apart from 15 minutes we dominated the game,” he declared. “We had a few poor kicks but we dominated possession and we finished it off.

“It was an oldfashioned Calcutta Cup game, swirling wind and an aggressive crowd without manners.

“I under-prepared the side for the first game but we’ll get stronger.”

The script had been written for a repeat of 2000, when England arrived as favourites but were mugged first by a mid-match squall and then their hosts.

The storm duly arrived but this time there was little sign of the Scots.

Given first use of

Storm Ciara’s gusts, they enjoyed territory but next to nothing else.

It was a day for doing the basics as well as the squalls would allow. So testing were the conditions that when Owen Farrell slotted a penalty with his second attempt on 12 minutes the three points felt huge.

That remained the difference at half-time and though the margin was small there was a sense England had done the hard work.

Imagine their shock, then, when they returned to find not only the wind had changed direction but Scotland were unrecognisable from the first half.

They ran hard at England from the kick-off and worked a penalty which they again kicked into the corner, but this time held it together to win another close enough for Adam Hastings to level the scores.

When captain Stuart Hogg then stepped

Farrell and Jonathan Joseph to run half the length of the pitch the momentum seemed to be with the home team.

But Genge came on and instead of being the match winner, Hogg found himself back fumbling the ball over his own line to give England the scrum position from which Genge struck.