Boks bashed but Jones wants more
EDDIE JONES has insisted he will not dish out cheap England caps this week, despite preparing to make changes against Fiji and ordering his players to ‘bore them to death’.
The England coach will have one eye on the future when he reshuffles his line-up for their second autumn Test at Twickenham. But asked if he would take the chance to blood a raft of rookies, Jones said: ‘No, I want people to deserve their opportunity.
‘To start for England has to be the proudest thing of their lives and to do that you have to earn it. There are a few players who have earned it and will get it. You come in as a fly-by-night and you’re not going to start for England — I don’t believe in that. There are guys that I want to have a look at who I think may be better than the guys I have in now.’
Fittingly, given the opposition, one player destined to be brought into the team is Bath’s Fiji-born wing Semesa Rokoduguni, who is likely to replace Marland Yarde.
Another Fiji-born player in the England squad, Nathan Hughes, the Wasps No8, could also start, as could centre Ben Te’o and prop Kyle Sinckler
Whoever he picks, Jones will demand they play with discipline. ‘You go to Fiji and everyone is throwing 15-metre torpedo passes, flicking the ball through their legs and side-stepping,’ he said. ‘If they can’t do that, they get bored. If they get bored they don’t want to play and when they do that you get points against them.
‘We are going to win the game and I want to win it conclusively. To win it conclusively we have to bore them to death. It doesn’t mean playing bad rugby, just being smart against them.’
On Saturday, England secured a record-breaking tenth consecutive victory under Jones, with an empathic triumph over the Springboks.
Every time England faced the Boks since 2006 they had lost, bar one draw in Port Elizabeth. But once the deed was done, the atmosphere of triumphalism in the stands was not repeated in the home dressing room.
There is a sense that, such has been England’s resurgence, all performances are now assessed on the basis of whether or not they would be sufficient to claim the prized scalp of the All Blacks. This hot-and-cold display would not have been good enough to lower the colours of the world champions, hence the realism.
Jones gave his men a pass mark but no distinction. Asked about his primary concerns, he said: ‘I was disappointed that we gave away a soft try at the end. In the scrum, we failed to cope with whatever they were doing, whether it was legal or not. We need to work those problems out quickly. Then we just need to get sharper in attack.’
The Australian was similarly aggrieved by his team’s disciplinary problems in the first quarter when they conceded six penalties to gift the Springboks points.
A tendency to stray offside will be highlighted when the squad conduct a review at their Surrey HQ today. Post-match inquests there are not sugar-coated. The success of 2016 has been founded on a willingness to lay bare any flaws, however trivial.
That quest for excellence can proceed from a position of burgeoning strength. England were without the influential forward trio of James Haskell, Maro Itoje and George Kruis but in many ways they barely missed a beat.
The line-out functioned superbly, which was a credit to the returning Courtney Lawes, who marked his 50th Test appearance with a first try. He and man-of-the-match Joe Launchbury were at the heart of the action.
Ben Youngs set the tone superbly with his kicking and exposed holes in the visitors’ defence.
Poor Pieter-Steph du Toit. The hapless South Africa openside bought more dummies than the parents of a new-born baby. Twice he stood and flapped as Youngs burst past him to send first George Ford then Owen Farrell away to the line.
Jones declared that the Leicester scrum-half can emerge as one of the world’s best in that position, saying: ‘He’s got an athletic advantage because he’s a big lad for a half-back. He’s got a nice turn of pace and a nice awareness of space. We want to develop that running game with him and he’s got an exceptional kicking game.’
Early on, before Youngs started enjoying the freedom of Twickenham, Jonny May claimed a try with his first touch of the ball for England since the World Cup, following a year decimated by a serious knee injury.
The Gloucester wing finished off a slick, pre-planned back-line move, but England were frustrated that they weren’t similarly ruthless more often.
‘We could have definitely exploited a few more opportunities,’ said Billy Vunipola.
‘We weren’t as clinical as we wanted to be. But it’s been our first game for a few months. Hopefully, next week we can put out something better.’
Late tries from Johan Goosen and Willie le Roux partly disguised the poverty of South Africa’s performance.
“To start for England you have to earn it”