Expect 18 months of hurt Jones offers a brutal assessment of his squad after shambles in Paris
Coach says players must adapt to changing game Armand called up with Lawes and Hughes out
England supporters have been warned to expect 18 months of hurt after Eddie Jones claimed the problems that have been exposed by successive defeats by Scotland and France would not be fixed until next year’s World Cup in Japan.
England’s 22-16 defeat in Paris on Saturday handed the Natwest Six Nations title to Ireland a week before Joe Schmidt’s Grand Slamchasing side arrive at Twickenham for the final round of matches.
It is the first time since 2010 that England have lost two matches in the same championship and, overall, a third defeat in their last five Six Nations outings. Ireland will today move ahead of England in the World Rugby rankings to second place behind New Zealand, with Jones’s side dropping to third place.
If Ireland go on to complete the Grand Slam on St Patrick’s Day, there is an outside chance that England could even finish in fifth place in the championship.
You have to go back to 2006 for the last time England lost three games in the same Six Nations.
Jones, who guided England to successive Six Nations titles in his first two years in charge, admitted that he would be forced to change strategy and personnel now to solve the problems that have arisen this season, particularly in his side’s failure to cope at the breakdown.
The first set of changes was forced on him last night when he called up Don Armand, the in-form Exeter Chiefs back row, after Courtney Lawes and Nathan Hughes were ruled out of the final game with knee injuries. The pair were due to undergo scans today.
England conceded 16 penalties against France, including a penalty try, against a side who had previously beaten only Italy in the past 11 months.
“The game is changing at the moment which will enforce some selection change,” Jones said before announcing his squad last night. “If you don’t have power, it’s hard to get momentum. I’m worried about the breakdown, we’ve got to sort the breakdown out and find ways of getting quick ball.
“We are not adapting to the referee’s interpretation at the ruck as well as we should. They are painful lessons at the moment.
“It’s a problem we’ve got to fix. It’s a sizeable but fixable problem. We can address it and keep getting better at it, but the reality is that we probably won’t get better at it until the World Cup.
“We just have to assess where we go with the team, the game has changed and we’re not necessarily well equipped to handle it so we’ve got to find different ways of how we’re going to handle it.
“I think our players are used to playing a certain way and we’re finding it hard to change their habits, and, again, that’s our responsiment
bility and my coaching is not good enough. Sometimes you need to get the lesson before you learn – and this will be a valuable lesson for us. If the game continues to be refereed like this then the World Cup is going to be very contestable at the breakdown. I haven’t got an issue with how it is being refereed. If that’s how they want to do it then we’ve got to adapt.”
Ireland would earn the Irish Rugby Football Union a tourna- bonus of more than £5 million if they complete the Grand Slam in a game where England supporters have had to pay up to £161 per ticket. Jonny May, the England wing, admitted that they had to deliver a big performance for the Twickenham crowd. “We do owe the country,” said May. “People support us and we have an opportunity when we wear that shirt to inspire them, and it hasn’t been good enough in the last couple of weeks.
“We will be more focused on showing pride. It is not a case of stopping them. We haven’t shown what we can do in the last couple of weeks so we want to play the way we know we can.”
James Haskell could force his way into the starting back row after an impactful cameo from the bench. Haskell said the match against Ireland would now represent the toughest test of Jones’s tenure. “This is the test of this team,”