England are favourites but Jones won’t underestimate wounded Wallabies
The odds will rarely be stacked so heavily in England’s favour.
A lot happens in 15 years. Players come and go, head coaches change and World Cups change hands, but today's final autumn international does not feel like a normal meeting between old rivals in England and Australia.
Everything that could go against the Wallabies has. A disastrous 2018 has seen them beaten at home in a series by Ireland for the first time, blown away by the All Blacks on all three occasions when the two sides met and suffer defeat against Argentina in the Rugby Championship. And let's not forget their decade-long unbeaten run over Wales went up in smoke at the start of the month.
A brief reprieve in defeating Italy last week soon evaporated as a sickness bug struck a number of their key players on Wednesday, before one of their best players in David Pocock was ruled out of the match with a persistent neck injury that finally got the better of him on Friday morning.
To top it all off, Kurtley Beale and Adam Ashley-Cooper – veterans of 200 cumulative international caps and members of the 2015 Rugby World Cup final side – breached team protocol by bringing three women, that included Ashley-Cooper’s sister-in-law, back to the team hotel in the hours after the Wales defeat.
All signs point to Australia suffering further misery to cap off a nightmare year – one even worse than the 12 months that preceded a remarkable turnaround season that culminated in that runners-up spot in 2015.
And yet, you can never count an Australian side out of the contest when they face England. Sure, they have not beaten their old rivals since one of their own took the reins in Eddie Jones as England swept to three consecutive wins on their 2016 tour, before back-to-back wins in the autumn internationals. But they have not been a million miles away, and even last November’s heavy 30-6 defeat could have been a very different story had England not scored four second-half tries.
Jones knows this only too well, given it used to be him in their shoes. The 58-year-old Australian was the man at the helm for that fateful day in Sydney back in 2003, which gives him all the insight that he needs to know what will motivate the Wallabies come this afternoon.
“This is going to be their best performance of the year, the game they traditionally want to win against the old foe, the Mother Country,” Jones said. “It’s at Twickenham, it’s their last game of the year, (Will) Genia’s 100th (appearance), they’ll be up for it. So all previous form goes out the window and it will be what happens on Saturday [today].
“Because it’s England. Australia-England is an old consistent rivalry for Australia and they like nothing better than to beat England at Twickenham.
“History dictates a lot of what we do. History dictates that Australia-England is a pretty special rugby match.”
“They’ll see this as a chance to put everything right. They can go on to the beach and be kings of the southern hemisphere. That’s how it is.”
The problem for England is that they do not have that same motivation. Perhaps they did 15 years ago, but that’s because up until the winning tour Down Under, Sir Clive Woodward’s side were chasing Australia. After five consecutive victories, England can no longer say that, but there are other ways to gain an advantage that captain Owen Farrell was able to pinpoint this week.
“We have played each other quite a lot in recent years, with a tour and so on,” he said. “You get to know each other a bit and it’s always a tough Test match, one you look forward to.
“You just probably have a bit more understanding about what you’re facing. There’s less of the unknown. As any Test match you get excited, you’re coming to play at Twickenham in front of 82,000 people. No matter who you’re playing it’s a massive day.
“It’s about getting us right. Making sure we peak on Saturday [today], making sure we build up to the game so we can be at our best. That’s what we’re setting out to do and if we do that I’m sure the performance and everything that comes off the back of it will come.”
Rather than fight fire with fire, as they did against South Africa and New Zealand, England will try to put the fire out by outsmarting the opposition. Jones hopes he’s done exactly that by leaving co-captain Dylan
Hartley on the bench and starting with Jamie George at hooker, allowing the Saracens forward to explode out of the blocks before the experience of Hartley comes on to douse the flames and see out the match.
If they can do just that, they will have salvaged a 2018 that was in serious danger of unravelling after the summer, following five defeats in eight Tests. Defeat this afternoon will not ruin the autumn, but after going into the campaign needing to prove a point to get back on the horse, a loss now against opposition mired in turmoil would be an unwelcome jolt on the road to the World Cup.