Jones tips his team for greatness but warns that danger lurks in Dublin
Coach urges players to take ‘fantastic opportunity’ Hapless Scots outclassed and overpowered by hosts
England’s all-conquering coach Eddie Jones challenged his players to prove their “greatness” by beating Ireland in Dublin next week to set the record for the most consecutive victories and become the first team in Six Nations history to win back-to-back Grand Slams.
Speaking after their 61-21 Calcutta Cup annihilation of Scotland, Jones said his unbeaten team had a “fantastic opportunity” next Saturday to post their 19th successive victory.
“It has put us in a very good position and we can go to Ireland and win the Grand Slam when no team in the history of the Six Nations has won back-to-back Slams,” he said.
“It is a fantastic opportunity and this game has given us that.
“Back-to-back Grand Slams for the players will mean that they achieve greatness, and how many times in your life do you get the chance to be great. That is the opportunity that they have got, so it is exciting. They are in the dressing room talking about it, they want to do it.”
Ireland, on St Patrick’s Day weekend, will be up for the challenge and Jones says England are “vulnerable”.
“Ireland, psychologically, are in a very strong position,” he added. “They’re beaten, they’re out of the tournament and they love spoiling parties. And the party they’d love to spoil the most is the England party.
“They’ve got an enormous amount of psychological advantage. We’re vulnerable, because we’ve won, we’re champions of the Six Nations. We’re going to have to work really hard to get ourselves right for the game. And we will.”
He added: “[The half-time message was] that we were ruthless and behaved like the number one team in the world. The number one team in the world goes on and finishes that off.
“We’re not beating our chests and
saying we’re the number one team in the world, but we aspire to be the number one team in the world.
“We’re one year into a four-year project. We’ve done reasonably well in the first year. We want to be the number one team in the world but we’re not, so we have got to get better.”
Centre Jonathan Jones claimed a hat-trick of tries and Jones added: “We executed some lovely plays. Some of the space created for JJ [Joseph] was absolutely outstanding and it was the work of George Ford and Owen Farrell on the inside.”
Farrell had been a fitness doubt in the lead-up but was near flawless while playing with strapping on his left thigh.
“Sometimes when you get those little injuries it helps you focus your game more. In a strange sort of way it helped Owen today,” Jones added.
The Australian insisted Joseph had been omitted against Italy a fortnight ago to allow the coaching team to look at other options and that the depth of his squad is increasing. He added: “To be the number one team in the world we need that depth to be very, very solid. That’s what we’re moving towards.”
Hapless Scotland were outclassed and outpowered from the first whistle to the moment when Danny Care touched down for England’s final try with almost 84 minutes on the clock. The Scots did not, however, do themselves many favours when hooker Fraser Brown was yellow-carded after just one minute for a dangerous tackle on Elliot Daly. By the time he came back 10 minutes later England had established huge momentum, and were leading 30-7 by half-time.
This is a low point for a Scotland side who arrived with high hopes of winning at Twickenham for the first time in 34 years. The final score was the most points Scotland have ever conceded in the championship, a margin of defeat equalled by the 43-3 loss in 2001 to the side who would go on to win the
‘How many times in life do you get a chance to be great? That’s the chance we have’
2003 World Cup. Scotland were outpowered in all facets of the game and lost four players — Stuart Hogg, Tommy Seymour, Ryan Wilson and Brown — to head knocks.
Such was the attrition rate among Scotland’s players that fielding their strongest team in the final match against Italy at Murrayfield next week, Vern Cotter’s last game as Scotland coach, will be challenging.
“That’s two games when we’ve faced bigger sides and we’ve ended up with eight players out with head injuries,” said Cotter. “The priority now is finding 15 fit guys to put out on the paddock against Italy.
“I said that no matter what happened this was a game from which we would learn a lot and that’s definitely the case. It was one of those days where everything went right for them, every bobble, every high ball, every referee’s decision, but now we’ve got to regroup because we can finish second in the Six Nations if we win next week.”