Scotland warned not to start crowing yet

Eddie Jones has already begun the mind games with Scotland, England’s next opponents who visit for the Calcutta Cup clash on March 11.

While England took time to put Italy away yesterday, Scotland will travel to Twickenham buoyed by their first victory over Wales in 10 years, a convincing 29-13 win at Murrayfield on Saturday.

But Jones warned the Scots not to be too cocky.

“If you said where we wanted to be at the end of three rounds, we’re exactly there,” said the England head coach, whose side top the Six Nations table with 13 points after three wins, while the Scots have nine points after two victories.

“We’re undefeated, we’ve got a bonus point. We’re looking forward to Scotland coming down.

“They’re talking big already, they’re on a roll, they’re confident, but they’ve got to carry round the expectations now for the whole Scotland nation for the next two weeks before they come down and play us. They’ve got to handle that, which is going to be interesting for them.”

Meanwhile, George Ford admitted that England were too slow to react to Italy’s decision not to compete for rucks that allowed their players to block their attempts to pass the ball.

“We sussed out what they were doing pretty quickly but we didn’t act on it quick enough,” Ford said. “It took until we went in at halftime to really clear our minds and come out with a clear plan of what we needed to do in the second half.

“We needed to pick through the ruck and get a bit of momentum there for two or three phases before we tried to shift the ball. That’s easier said than done when you have two or three guys there to stop the pick-and-go.

“Italy wanted to do it because they wanted to slow the game down to make the game more static and stop us doing what we want to do.”