MURRAYFIELD MUGGINGS FOR ENGLAND
And taking England to an unlikely title
for that contact. It’s important our players are ready for the physical battle but are in control of their discipline first of all.
“If they have that fire inside them and they put it into tackles then great, that’s what you want to see.
“Players are getting motivated to play a game but there’s Northampton players in both teams, Saracens players... they’re really good friends nowadays in international rugby.
“They get on really well after the game even though they wouldn’t want to admit that going into the game.” left, and naming six forwards on the bench for only the fifth time in his tenure.
South Africa adopted the same 6-2 split between forwards and backs en route to winning the World Cup and Jones hopes being able to summon a new front-five plus a back rower will give England 80-minute power on the gain line.
Jones said: “We are expecting strong competition at the breakdown as we’ve got a referee who tends to allow contest. We think it’s going to be a high-volume, high-intensity game in the forwards. Just look at our last game against Scotland. I think 80 per cent of it was played in one [Finn Russell] pass!
“That sort of suggests there’s not much width in the game and you want to have as much artillery in that area as you can.
“We’ve got an obvious game plan that we want to play against them. We’re not hiding from the fact we want to take them on up front.
“We are pretty well equipped. We feel we can get an edge in that area.” Without Billy Vunipola and Manu
Stirred by a slow march out onto the pitch and their new anthem Flower of Scotland, complete with its Bannockburn references, the Scots took down Will Carling’s fancied team with Tony Stanger’s chip-and-chase try to win a tumultuous Grand Slam decider in the then Five Nations.
The RFU issued a grovelling apology to Princess Anne after a beaten England left the pitch rather than accepting the Six Nations trophy from her. Their Grand Slam aspirations had unravelled in the rain as Duncan Hodge delivered a shock victory for Scotland.
Two tries from Huw Jones, one sparked by the pass of the decade from Finn Russell, earned Scotland their first win over England in 10 years. The prelude had been a scuffle in the tunnel, left, before kick-off after Scotland’s Ryan Wilson had verbally abused George Ford.
Tuilagi, this is a team short of big carriers, though the return of George Kruis and Mako Vunipola improves the situation.
England also need Willi Heinz, given a first Six Nations start at the age of 33, to deliver more contestable kicks than Youngs managed in Paris.
Get it right and Jones’
‘last laugh’ dream may live to see another day.
OLD HAND: Heinz takes Ben Youngs’ place at No9
SCOTLAND: S Hogg (c); Maitland, Jones, Johnson, Kinghorn, Hastings, Price; Sutherland, Brown, Fagerson, Cummings, Gray, Ritchie, Watson, Bradbury. Replacements: McInally, Dell, Berghan, Toolis, Haining, Horne, Hutchinson, Harris. ENGLAND: Furbank; May, Joseph, Farrell (c), Daly; Ford, Heinz; M Vunipola, George, Sinckler, Kruis, Itoje, Ludlam, Underhill, Curry. Replacements: Dunn, Genge, Stuart, Launchbury, Lawes, Earl, Youngs, Devoto. Referee: P Gauzere (France). Kick-off: 4.45pm, BBC 1.