Eddie Jones was forced to eat his words on Sunday after France were inspired to a thrilling Six Nations victory against England by his claims that his side would unleash “absolute brutality” in Paris.
England were outgunned by France’s new-look side and went into half-time 17-0 down – the first time they had failed to score a point before the interval in the competition for 32 years. Two fine individual tries from Jonny May gave England some respectability after the break but George Furbank endured a difficult debut at full‑back and Tom Curry’s move to No 8 remains a work in progress.
Compounding England’s woes, Manu Tuilagi limped off after 15 minutes with a groin injury and is a serious doubt for the trip to Scotland on Saturday. In his absence, and that of both Vunipolas, England looked underpowered, just as they had done in the World Cup final despite Jones’s claim his side were “going to go out there to make sure they understand what Test rugby is”.
The No 8 Grégory Alldritt was among his side’s standout performers along with the captain and flanker, Charles Ollivon, and he revealed Jones’s words, which raised eyebrows in France, had served as motivation to begin life under Fabien Galthié with a victory. “He was saying that we couldn’t manage the brutality of the England team,” said Alldritt. “But when you are a winner, a competitor, you just want to show him that you can manage that. Of course, we read it. We were clearly going to put some fighting spirit out there.”
May also acknowledged France were fired up to respond. He said: “Yeah, 100%. But brutality is a word that we use, it doesn’t necessarily mean as simple as smashing what’s in front of you. It’s being brutal in terms of your decision making, being brutal in terms of your accuracy, brutal in terms of your adaptability.”
Jones was at a loss to explain why his side had started so poorly again but was adamant he would not make wholesale changes against Scotland. “It’s like we forgot how to play rugby in the first half. We were slow out of the blocks, we were sorry for ourselves and out of kilter, we let the situation get to us. We didn’t match their intensity early on. We struggled to get there. Why? We’d all like to know. If we knew, we’d never lose a game.”
Jones also refused to blame the referee Nigel Owens for allowing Ollivon’s first try, having ruled he had not knocked the ball on in the buildup. England were convinced he had and that Owens was about to blow his whistle but both Jones and May, who would almost certainly have caught Ollivon, admitted it was a mistake to stop playing.
“You always get taught to keep playing until the whistle blows,” Jones said. “I thought he blew the whistle at one stage. It’s a mistake we made. But we can rectify that.”
May said: “That’s one of the first things you learn as a kid isn’t it? Play to the whistle and I didn’t, so I’ll own that one. But what I saw is it hit his hand and then somebody in front of him caught it, and Nigel did go to blow his whistle. But I own that one. Play to the whistle.”
Tuilagi is due to be assessed in the coming days but the outlook is worrying given the litany of groin injuries he has had in the past. “Obviously he’s a big gainline player for us and in those conditions we definitely did miss him,” Jones said. “But we need to be good enough to cope with that.”
