How Eddie turns us into dragon slayers

SLAY the Dragon was our theme of the week for Eddie Jones’ first game against Wales. At our Monday meeting, all of the players were given a printout of this red dragon that had been tabbed up with different areas of the match: breakdown, set piece, kicking and such.

Coaches like using imagery to freshen things up, so we were given a bit of a history lesson on how St George had slayed a dragon back in the 13th century. We were the English knights who had to bring down this beast by winning all the different battles in the match.

Every player is given a black A4 folder with their name and cap number on it, so you’d tuck away your dragon printout with everything else. A lot of handouts with systems and plays were given out at the start of the campaign, so by the end of every competition your folder was 50-odd pages deep.

Eddie told us not to leave them anywhere or you’d be in big trouble. If you’re putting anything in the bin, you were told to give it to security to put it through the shredder. It is a tight ship. The funny thing is that Eddie would always leave his man-bag or notepad lying around on the table with all of his sensitive information! No one ever dared to look at it because, knowing Eddie, it could have been a test with some security camera in the corner of the room.

This week I expect England will spend a lot of time looking at how they can exploit Wales out wide. With George North and Josh Adams injured, they may pinpoint the back three as an area of weakness. France opened them up with some cross-field kicks, so George Ford and Owen Farrell will probably do the same — especially if young Louis Rees-Zammit is making his debut.

They will probably target the 13-winger channel, too, because I’m not sure how comfortable Nick Tompkins has looked defending in the Welsh system at outside-centre. They’ll hit it up with a couple of quick rucks and then use Manu Tuilagi as a hard runner at Tompkins’ inside shoulder. That could create some defensive indecision and allow an outside-back to get on the outside to expose the wingers. There’s no one worse to face than Manu when you’ve got a couple of defensive weaknesses.

It’s always a big occasion when you face Wales, so both sets of players will be pumped up. It’s probably the biggest rivalry from an English perspective but sometimes that sense of hatred can go too far.

Every time we played Wales I knew I was going to cop a load of abuse on social media. The Wales fans seem to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder. I know that I’m a marmite player but some of the messages I received overstepped the mark.

You’d get things like ‘f*** off you English c***’ or ‘f*** off and die’. I know sport is about emotion but who are these idiots?

I used to have a website for supporters, companies or whoever to get in touch. People could write messages which then get emailed on to you. You’d get fans asking you to sign things, which was great, but you’d also get these idiots sending abuse. My wife was looking after it and we had to shut it down during the 2015 World Cup as there was so much c**p coming through it.

There’s no one to really talk to about stuff like that in the team environment. Everyone says, ‘Just ignore it, it’s some troll’. It’s frowned upon to let it bother you. You try not to let it affect you but after a while it builds up into something negative.

It probably did have a knock-on effect on my playing, training and general life. There should be more in place to handle it as sport is still trying to figure out the best way to use social media.

Hopefully there won’t be too much of that this week, though, just a few white knights slaying dragons!