ANGRY EDDIE SWIPE AT REF
Jones threatens to ‘do a Rassie’ over missing penalty as England f lop
EDDIE JONES bizarrely threatened to release a Rassie Erasmus-style video nasty after England’s Six Nations campaign began with defeat for the third straight year.
Jones saw his side beaten 20-17 by Scotland at Murrayfield as Gregor Townsend’s men came from seven points down to win.
Marcus Smith’s try and penalty looked like it had put England in control at 17-10, but Jones replaced the Harlequins playmaker with George Ford in the 63rd minute.
Scotland were almost immediately awarded a penalty try and they held on for victory as referee Ben O’Keeffe refused to award England a last-gasp penalty that could have levelled the scores, despite their late scrum dominance.
‘I’m just preparing a video mate, so you’ll have to wait for it,’ said Jones. ‘Wait for the video mate — we’ve got the production team on it now. It’s called “Rassie in Love With”. That’s my production team, so I’m getting it ready mate.’
South Africa director of rugby Erasmus has only just finished a ban for releasing a
video that heavily criticised referee Nic Berry after the Lions had won the first Test in South Africa.
England skipper Tom Curry also revealed his frustration at the late decision, saying: ‘I felt we had dominance. We’ve got to look at the footage and we’ll see.’
Jones watched his side throw away a seven-point lead in the final quarter, after the head coach made wholesale substitutions. Smith was replaced by Ford after scoring all of England’s points and Sir Clive Woodward believes the replacements cost England the game.
‘They should have won comfortably yet lost because of the mystifying nonsensical substitutions in the second half by Eddie Jones,’ said Woodward.
‘Why is the game and Jones particularly obsessed with this concept of finishers? Please somebody enlighten me, I don’t understand it. I need help here. Keep your best players on the park.
‘On the hour, England, after a really good third quarter, were winning that game 17-10 with power to add. Marcus Smith had scored all 17 points and was scarcely out of breath. He was warming to his task nicely and as the England pack started to rumble Scotland were in for a torrid final 20 minutes.’
England have now won just one of the last five Calcutta Cup meetings, with Scotland winning consecutive crowns for the first time since 1984.
‘This feels just as good as winning at Twickenham,’ said jubilant Scotland coach Townsend. ‘To hear and feel that atmosphere was just amazing. We missed the crowd at this fixture last year so to have them back in full voice was special.
‘This team have done really well in this fixture. We’ve had the trophy four times out of the last five. It’s a game we not just get up for but one where we deliver close to our best rugby. We didn’t get close to our best rugby today, but the standards we’ve set are much higher than a few years ago.’
England travel to Rome next week, when they must get their campaign on track with a dominant victory over Italy.
Playmaker Smith said: ‘I’m massively confident we can pick ourselves up. We’ve got brilliant leaders in this group and they drive us in the right way. It’s a setback but we’ve been in this position before.
‘There is no straight line to success so next week in training we’ll graft even harder and pay more attention to ever single detail and try to improve as individuals and as a team together.’