England must try to ease pain of massacre

EDDIE Jones has told his England team to do their best to lift the mood of the country after the Manchester massacre.

England take on the Barbarians at Twickenham today and Jones said:

“Everyone is obviously feeling a bit down about it and if we can play some good rugby on Sunday then it helps lift the mood.

“Rugby teams don’t win wars, they don’t change economies, they don’t discover cures for AIDS. But what we can do is lift the mood of people if we put in a really good vibrant performance, and that is what we want to do on Sunday.

“From a social point of view everyone has got a sorrow about Manchester.

“You don’t like to see that sort of thing happen to young kids, so everyone feels for the families.

“But we don’t want to be a team that relies on that (emotion) to be a good performing team. We have got to be better than that. We have got to be a team that regardless of what happens we perform at our best.”

Jones also looked ahead to the effect the Lions tour may have on his England players.

“You never know how players are going to come back from the Lions tour. Some guys might come back and have only held tackle bags and played 20 minutes against the Chiefs.

“There will be guys who don’t get a lot of game time, and those guys will be busting to play (when the new season starts). Other guys might play three Lions Tests and be absolutely mentally and physically fatigued, and then we will need to talk to their clubs and say ‘how can we look after these players better to get them through?’

“Last year was unique because they had the World Cup and went straight into the Premiership. This year, all of them had a proper pre-season.

“I don’t think many of our guys have played more than 30 games. I don’t think there is one.

“If you look at this season in isolation it has been handled very well. If you look at repeating a World Cup season end-onend, then you have got problems (with a long season), but that is not how it is at the moment.”