Jones drops Cokanasiga to help protect young winger from hype
Eddie Jones went back to the future as he recalled Jack Nowell in place of Joe Cokanasiga among four changes to the England team for tomorrow’s mustwin, final-round Six Nations match against Scotland at Twickenham.
England can capture the Six Nations title for the third time in Jones’s four years as head coach if they beat the Scots, and Wales lose to Ireland in Cardiff earlier in the day.
Cokanasiga was a popular choice as the TV broadcaster’s man of the match in England’s eight-try win over Italy last weekend, but Jones has dropped the 21-year-old Bath wing in favour of Nowell of Exeter – who missed the Italy game injured – while prop Ben Moon, flanker Mark Wilson and centre Henry Slade edge out Ellis Genge, Brad Shields and Ben Te’o respectively.
Disregarding the subsequent injuries to Mako Vunipola and Maro Itoje, it means Jones has restored the starting team who beat Ireland impressively in Dublin on weekend one of the Championship at the start of February.
Jones admitted one of his motives for demoting Cokanasiga to be the 24th-man first reserve was to spare him undue hype, even while the coach himself spoke of the exciting young giant who has just four caps going on to win 100.
“I recall looking after guys like Matt Giteau and George Smith in a similar way,” Jones said of two Australians who both reached the century of Tests. “Expose them, bring them back; expose them, bring them back – and when they’re ready to go, you let ’em go. Some guys start each week, some guys finish, some become supporters, and we need players to understand that. This is a non-negotiable for us.”
The hunch that the centre
pairing of Te’o – now on the bench – and Manu Tuilagi against the Italians was a trial ahead of the autumn’s World Cup appears borne out by the return of the slicker-passing Slade.
“We had a training run on Wednesday which in terms of allthegps[figures]wasbyfar our most impressive,” Jones said. “So we’re going in a great direction and Saturday will be a bit of an explosion.” Jones also offered a questionable analysis of Wales’ state of health by observing how the Grand-slam chasers looked “tired” as “they’ve made more tackles than anyone else in the tournament”, whereas Ireland – who have their own outside chance of the title as they stand one point behind England – were “peaking” after wins over Scotland, Italy and France. Jones qualified his words by saying: “They’re a good team, Wales, they’re well coached and I’m sure they’ll handle it.”
But he incited a chuckling response from his Wales counterpart, Warren Gatland, who said: “If you look at the stats England have made a hell of a lot more tackles than us in this tournament. My advice to Eddie is to concentrate on the Scotland match.”
England’s captain Owen Farrell said he would send a good-luck text to his father Andy, the Ireland defence coach, and he backed Jones’ handling of Cokanasiga. “I remember he did it a little bit with Maro [Itoje] and he turned out all right,” said Farrell, recalling Jones’s wait to give a start to the highlyregarded Saracens lock until the third match of the 2016 Six Nations.