England still underdogs despite sealing title, insists Jones
England coach Eddie Jones. EDDIE JONES last night tried to paint his team as underdogs ahead of their final championship game in Dublin next week.
That’s despite his England side retaining their RBS 6 Nations title with an emphatic defeat of Scotland, while Ireland lost to Wales on Friday night and have already been beaten by the Scots.
“We can go to Ireland now and win the Grand Slam,” said Jones.
“No team ever in the history of the Six Nations has won back-to-back Grand Slams, it’s only been done four times in Five Nations history, so we’ve got a fantastic opportunity because of this game. Ireland will be a completely different contest. Ireland psychologically are in a very strong position, they’re beaten, they’re out of the tournament.
“They love spoiling parties, and the party they’d love to spoil the most is the England party so they’ve got an enormous amount of psychological advantage.
“We’re vulnerable because we’ve one, we’re champions of the Six Nations, we’re in the most vulnerable state so we’re
going to have to work really hard to get ourselves right for the game, and we’ll be right.”
When asked what it would mean to achieve a double Grand Slam Jones insisted: “Not for me, it means for the players they’ve achieved greatness.
“How many times in your life do you get to be great, and that’s the opportunity they’ve got so it’s exciting.
“They’re in the dressing-room now talking about it, they want to do it.
“They won’t get carried away. They’re very aware of their responsibilities, they’ve got a great captain in Dylan Hartley and he’s doing a fine job and he keeps their feet on the ground. It’s important to acknowledge your achievements so we’ll do that, we’ll have a couple of quiet drinks tonight and enjoy that but tomorrow night we’ll get together and we’re on to Ireland and we know that’s going to be difficult.”
Looking at the way England played yesterday, Jones added: “We’ve had two excellent weeks of preparation.
“There’s been an attitude shift in the team. The attitude hasn’t been bad, but it’s shifted to embrace what’s ahead of us and to lift to the next level.
“Credit to Scotland, they stuck in well, they had a lot of injuries, they worked hard and are well-coached by Vern Cotter.
“But we were good in our set-piece and our breakdown work was generally very good against a good jackling team and we executed some lovely plays.
“We’re not the No.1 team in the world, we’re No.2. We’re not beating our chests and saying we’re the No.1 team in the world but we aspire to be.
“We’re one year into a four-year project, that’s the reality of it, so we’ve done reasonably well in the first year but we’ve got to get better.
“We want to be the No.1 team in the world so we’ve got to get better.”