England dodged a psycho film says Eddie
EDDIE Jones said his team escaped a “psycho horror movie” with Wales and then targeted putting smiles back on the faces of England’s fans with Autumn Nations Cup glory.
England will play France at Twickenham in front of 2,000 supporters next Sunday.
“At half-time it could have been a psycho horror movie,” said Jones.
“The woman goes to the shower and you know what’s coming from behind the shower curtain. The boys showed really good tactical discipline to stick to our game.
“We had one little wonky period for around ten minutes in the second half, but generally we had game control.”
Looking ahead to a final with France, Jones added: “We’ve got to put a smile back on the fans’ faces.
“It’s nice to see rugby returning to having fans as part of an active community. For us it’s a chance to get better again. We don’t feel like we’ve played our best rugby yet.
“It’s our grand final of 2020, and we want to make sure we put on our best performance. We want to light up people’s eyes.”
England were beaten by France at the start of the Six Nations and asked if his team were out for revenge, captain Owen Farrell said: “We’ve got to prove to ourselves we are getting better and going in the right direction. That is all internal and we are always critical of ourselves.
“We want to improve as much as possible and we have another opportunity
to do that.” England’s Underhill was their star man for the second week running.
The flanker, who played two seasons of club rugby at Ospreys before moving to Bath, said he knew that Wales would provide stiff opposition, despite Pivac’s side only ending a run of six straight defeats last weekend against Georgia.
“I’m very happy. We knew it was going to be tough down here, but we can be proud of the performance,” Underhill said.
“Wales are still a quality team. It’s a massive win because we know they can play and have very dangerous players – good ball-carriers and serious pace on the outside.
“That was a semi-final and now we will look forward to next week.”
Underhill also defended England’s approach of building their game on a strong set-piece and defence.
England won all 11 of their own lineouts and forced Wales into conceding five penalties at the scrum.
“I wouldn't say it (the style) is boring. If you don’t like scrums and lineouts, go and watch rugby league,” he added.
“The quality of the setpiece now compared to ten years ago is the difference. The quality of rugby in general is going up and the more that goes up, the smaller the margin for error.”
Jones revealed England’s players will be given time off and allowed to return to their families after facing Wales and before they build-up to a final with France.
“We’ll give the boys a short break and then we’ll rip into it and have a great preparation for France,” he said. “It looks like we’re pretty good on injuries.
“Our medical and strength and conditioning staff are doing a fantastic job. We train ridiculously hard and we’ve not got players getting injured so it’s good.”