Eddie’s F-word fury!
MATCH REPORT & SIR CLIVE’S VERDICT
THE big screens at each end of the pitch told the story. England had just conceded an eighth penalty and the camera panned to Eddie Jones, face like thunder, slamming down his notepad.
‘Oh, ****,’ he shouted. ‘How ****** stupid are we?’
Had Argentina turned up with a decent kicker, it would have given the visitors the opportunity to take a one-point lead after 65 minutes. Instead, it offered Jones an unwelcome reminder that his team have plenty to work on as they kicked off their autumn series with a stuttering victory.
Before kick-off, Dylan Hartley said the performance would be the culmination of three months of preparation. At times, however, it felt like we were waiting three months for the final whistle.
This was painful viewing — aside from the crunching hits by rookie No 7 Sam Underhill. England may finally have the answer to their long-term, openside problem.
The 21-year-old flew at the ankles of Argentine runners, showing little regard for his body and proved one of the few English players to step up in the absence of Lions pair Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje.
‘It was a grindathon, wasn’t it?’ said Jones. ‘We want to play good rugby and I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be frustrated. Throwing stuff? That is pretty frustrated.’
Rested following the Lions tour, Farrell was put in charge of water boy duties. He wore a yellow arm band and shouted instructions — with his absence on the pitch heavily felt.
England missed Farrell as the glue in their attack — with Henry Slade struggling to impose himself — as well as his pinpoint goal kicking, with George Ford missing the first penalty three minutes into the series.
Ford eventually found his nerve and kicked England to a 6-3 lead after 14 minutes but the game was a stop-start affair.
The number crunchers in the England ranks had worked out that Argentina score 78 per cent of their tries from unstructured play, yet there was nothing fast or expansive on show here.
There were misplaced kicks and dropped balls punctuated by multiple stoppages as a result of the heavy collisions.
Full-back Mike Brown was the first casualty, departing after 22 minutes.
The veteran jumped to challenge Joaquin Tuculet in the air and crashed head-first into the turf. It was a fair challenge, with both players getting their hands on the ball, but Tuculet was sin-binned.
This forced Jones to experiment with his full-back options.
Anthony Watson shifted from the wing and the Lions star showed flashes of his attacking threat when he received the ball in the back field.
‘Anthony did a great job,’ said Jones. ‘He has given us a second option at full-back. We’ve got to find one more option, then we’ve got the three.
‘In terms of increasing the depth of our squad, which is the theme of 2017, we did that.’
There is an admirable obsession with depth and self-improvement in the English camp.
Players declare their insatiable appetite ‘to get better’ in press conferences. Most statements round off with ‘we just want to get better’ — giving the impression they have been hypnotised by someone holding up a card at the back of the room declaring ‘ You must get better’.
Based on this performance, there is plenty for England to get better at when they play Australia next weekend.
‘We’ve got a very clear vision of how we want t o play against Australia and it should be fun,’ said Jones.
‘We had opportunities to score more points and we just couldn’t. Every time we created something a pass would go behind, a pass would go ahead, a pass would go to the wrong person.
‘The reality is we haven’t played a game together since March — we had players coming back from the Lions who had only done two training sessions, so our fluency and our understanding wasn’t there.’
The performance of Nathan Hughes offered another bonus. The No 8 partly filled the ballcarrying void left by Billy Vunipola, demonstrating impressive juggling skills to score the first try after 23 minutes.
Courtney Lawes and Mako Vunipola drove hard and, for a moment, England executed their ‘flat and fast’ gameplan. They worked the ball around the corner and, after nine phases, Ford fizzed out the final, four-man miss-pass to send Hughes over.
Argentina will leave London ruing missed opportunities.
Winning has become an alien concept for the tourists, who have lost 17 of their last 22 games, and they fluffed their prime chance to reverse the trend as Juan Martin Hernandez missed two penalties.
Yet they continued to fight into the third quarter. An Underhill penalty sparked Jones’ touchline rage but Emiliano Boffelli missed the three-pointer as another kick went begging.
Then, after 58 minutes, Jones r eplaced Hartley with Jamie George in search of inspiration.
Lawes gathered a kick which allowed Alex Lozowski to break down field before Slade turned provider for Semesa Rokoduguni’s try — even though the pass looked to have gone forward.
But the Pumas had the final say. They went through a remarkable 30 phases for Nicolas Sanchez to touch down — showing the sort of patience and composure that England lacked.