Eddie Jones will send his England players back to their clubs on Monday with the message that they have a short amount of time to show they can be part of a side that wins the World Cup in Japan.
England ended their year with a 48-14 victory over Samoa at Twickenham to give them a record of nine wins in 10 Tests in 2017 and 22 in 23 since Jones took over as head coach at the end of the last World Cup, when Stuart Lancaster’s team failed to make it out of their group.
“It was a great learning experience for the players,” said Jones. “A number were playing their first big Test: some struggled and others did well. It was the sort of match we needed, against a side we were expected to beat by a big score.
“We started the game well and thought it would be easy. It was a bit of a muddling performance from us, maybe getting a little bit seduced by the perceived easiness of the game. We stopped doing the small things well, we got pulled back and then finished the game off. Some players will be disappointed and they have plenty to reflect on.
“The squad breaks up now and the players have eight weeks to show their desire to be part of a World Cup-winning side. It is about how hard they want to work. We have great competition for places and have awarded 12 new caps this year. We have people competing for every position and we are moving in the right direction with three good wins this month.”
England’s next match is against Italy in Rome in the Six Nations on 4 February. They will be bidding to become the first team to win the tournament three seasons in a row.
“The Six Nations will be difficult because everyone wants to beat us,” he said. “We are put under great pressure every game and we will have to prepare really well. We have a chance to create history in the tournament and we have got to get better every game, hanging in there and doing the small things better.”
England remain in pursuit of New Zealand at the top of the world rankings, with the two teams finally meeting at Twickenham in a year’s time. “I read comments about the All Blacks being in decay,” said Jones. “When you have a 93% winning record and are in decay, you are not doing too badly. We get criticised when we are at 95%.”
The England captain, Dylan Hartley, who came off the bench to replace Jamie George, his usual understudy, for the final 17 minutes, said he was more satisfied with the result than the performance. “We were not clinical enough and our discipline let us down,” he said. “The result is key, but we can be better in so many areas.
“We had a number of new combinations and it was always going to be a difficult game against a talented side but we talked about doing the basics well and failed to do so.
“We have got to look at ourselves, but we learned a lot from the game and the coaches have got a lot to think about.”
