RING OF TRUTH!
England stars phone Eddie to take blame for penalty count and pledge to put it right
ENGLAND have stepped up their bid to solve the disciplinary trouble which is undermining their Six Nations campaign — by taking personal responsibility last week and advice from a referee this week.
Head coach Eddie Jones revealed yesterday that a handful of his players had phoned him in the aftermath of the defeat against Wales in Cardiff, to admit that they need to play their part in reducing the damaging penalty count.
England conceded 14 in the Welsh capital, en route to a 40-24 defeat, with Maro Itoje at fault for five of them.
A clean- up operation has become the urgent priority ahead of France’s visit to Twickenham on Saturday and Jones said: ‘I’ve had at least three or four players ring me during this week to talk about how they need to tend to their errors. That’s the great honesty of this team.’
When asked to clarify the nature of the mea culpa calls from certain players — who he did not identify — Jones added: ‘ I was talking about avoidable penalties.
‘We worked out that of the 14 penalties, five were avoidable and we asked the players to reflect if they were those players and then come up with a plan with how they can avoid them in the future.
‘Those five avoidable ones are players making errors — trying too hard in the spur of the moment. That’s something only an individual player can fix; that ability to do the right thing at that particular moment.
‘If we can get our penalty-count down from 14 to nine, that gets us in a great position to win the game.
‘ Discipline is generally a by-product of something else in the game. Sometimes it’s the pressure the opposition put on you. Sometimes it’s the pressure the players put on themselves to try and find a way to get into the game.
‘We can’t sort it out with one stroke of the pen, but we’re working through it. We will solve it and we’ll be better in the next game.’ The head coach spoke about needing to keep going through specific training drills until his England squad obtain the right ‘muscle memory’ — so they instinctively avoid infringing, for instance by managing to stay on their feet in rucks.
Despite the complication of Covid restrictions, they will receive assistance in the build-up to the match against in-form France.
‘We will have a referee in this week,’ said Jones. ‘We have done it previously with some success and other times not so successfully, but we will try it again.’
Defeat against Wales and an opening-weekend loss at home to Scotland means the English title defence has turned to dust. However, Jones won’t fast-track the uncapped Paolo Odogwu and George Martin, or give more game-time to the likes of Ben Earl and Max Malins, as a knee-jerk response to England’s trials and tribulations.
‘When I select a player, I want them to be ready to play and if I don’t think they’re ready to play, just because we’re going through a tough spell at the moment, it’s not a reason to put them in,’ he said.
‘We need to start changing the team and we’ll do that in an ordered way.’
France head coach Fabien Galthie has recalled Toulouse fly-half Romain Ntamack and Racing 92 centre Virimi Vakatawa — who have both recovered from injury — for Saturday’s showdown.