If Australians were hoping Eddie Jones might rotate his first-choice England team and make life slightly easier for his hosts in Saturday’s final Test they should have known better. Jones has duly done the opposite, announcing just one injury-enforced change to the side that clinched a 2-0 series victory in Melbourne. With the exception of the Northampton back-rower Teimana Harrison, deputising for the injured James Haskell, the Wallabies will be confronted with more of the same.
Aside from anything else, it is a selection that sends an unequivocal message to England’s fringe players. Once it became apparent his established starters still had more to give, Jones decided there was more value in sticking with them. As well as challenging his team to clinch a 3-0 series whitewash he is keen to emphasise that cheap England caps are no longer available.
Having never won a full Australian cap himself, Jones also wants to foster an increasing sense of internal competition. “Some of the players are saying that what they enjoy about the environment now is it’s very aspirational,” he said. “You have to work hard to get a jersey and players don’t want to give their jersey away. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to beat Australia 3-0.”
His other priority is to ensure players do not get carried away with their recent success. “When you’ve had a couple of wins praise can make you weak,” said Jones, particularly wary of social media’s effect on impressionable young minds. “Outside praise is dangerous for a team and they’ve been getting a lot of it. We’ve just got to be careful. If you become weak once you can become weak twice and to be a champion team you can’t be like that.
“It comes down to the mental strength and desire of the player to want to be part of the England side. I remember having a discussion with Kyran Bracken when I first went to Saracens. I asked him why England were so successful leading up to 2003 and he said one of the reasons was because there was such competition for places.”
Whether Alex Goode, Henry Slade and Ben Te’o, none of whom will feature in a single match on this tour, feel hard done by is irrelevant as far as Jones is concerned. He did send the non-selected players out for a consolatory dinner on the harbour – “They’re getting kissed and cuddled by the assistant coaches tonight” – but is determined to breed a Kiwi-style mindset where there is no room for sentiment. “We’ve picked the best 23 ... the others have just got to work harder on the areas in which they’re not good enough. If players are fit, mentally right to play and they’re the best player, you pick them. I haven’t seen any indication of tiredness. We’ve got all the data you could poke a stick at and it all indicates they are good.”
The exception is Haskell, who has been nursing a cracked foot and a sore shoulder for a while and has finally been forced to listen to his screaming body. Jack Nowell, by contrast, has passed all the necessary concussion protocols and will resume on the wing as England seek to become the first side since 1971 to inflict a 3-0 home series defeat on the Wallabies.
While it would have been interesting to see how, say, Te’o responded to Test union or Goode, the Premiership’s player of the year, reacted to his repeated omissions, it is clear Jones would love to finish the tour on a high. So much for all those weary unsuccessful trudges through the southern hemisphere that have mostly been England’s annual fate. “If you look at sides who come to Australia and win, the only side who regularly does is New Zealand,” said Jones. “Winning the series here 3-0 will be a significant achievement for the team.”
His captain Dylan Hartley feels similarly, unwilling to pass up the opportunity of a clean sweep: “I said after game one in Brisbane that we had to park the egos ... the team have prepared like it is last week’s game – a decider.”
It produced a hugely competitive training session on Tuesday, much to Jones’s satisfaction: “I just sense a real intensity about them. You’ve got to remember that when we came to Australia they tried to humiliate us. They said it was a joke that we even considered winning the series. All the smart guys in the papers were saying 3-0. Now they’re not so smart.”
It is a far cry from last year’s World Cup when Harrison, among others, was nowhere near the squad. The New Zealand-reared forward has what Jones calls “a bit of mongrel” about him and qualifies for England via his mother, who hails from Derby. Hartley first spotted him playing for his old school in Rotorua and recommended him to Northampton.
Jones, among other things, likes his attitude: “He is a bit of a streetfighter. He doesn’t mind throwing it around a bit and we are going to need that on Saturday night.” England, for the third weekend running, do not intend taking a backward step.
England M Brown (Harlequins); A Watson (Bath), J Joseph (Bath), O Farrell (Saracens), J Nowell (Exeter Chiefs); G Ford (Bath), B Youngs (Leicester); M Vunipola (Saracens), D Hartley (Northampton, capt), D Cole (Leicester), G Kruis (Saracens), M Itoje (Saracens), C Robshaw (Harlequins), T Harrison (Northampton), B Vunipola (Saracens).
Replacements J George (Saracens), M Mullan (Wasps), P Hill (Northampton), J Launchbury (Wasps), C Lawes (Northampton), J Clifford (Harlequins), D Care (Harlequins), E Daly (Wasps).
