England’s 15th win, the one that broke the record set by the squad that won the World Cup in 2003, was the tightest yet. There were only three points in it, though you would never have known that from the way the head coach, Eddie Jones, told it after the match was over. “I thought we were awful,” Jones said, “but I always thought we were going to win.”
Sports journalists are usually a thirsty lot, but Jones’s press conferences leave people feeling particularly parched because you have to take so many pinches of salt with what he says. But this line seemed, and sounded, straight. Or at least, as close to it as his public utterances tend to get.
England were outplayed for much of the match and were four points down with 20 minutes to play, but no one at Twickenham seemed particularly surprised that they still managed to find a way to win.
Jones has been through all this with England before. In last year’s Six Nations they struggled to thread two good halves together all through the tournament. So he knows what to say and do at half-time to turn things around. He says that it’s the players and “their never say die attitude” that pulls them through. But a lot of it is down to him and his coaching team too. England were flustered in the first half, and made a lot of stupid mistakes, handling errors, high tackles, and soft penalties. In the second half, they wrestled back control of the match.
In the final quarter Dylan Hartley had left the field, and Owen Farrell seemed to be in charge. Certainly, it was his decision to kick a penalty towards the corner instead of taking a shot at goal. Jones had just made three changes, bringing Danny Care on for Ben Youngs, Matt Mullan on for Joe Marler, and James Haskell on for Joe Launchbury so he could switch Maro Itoje back to lock.
Now he made a couple more. Ben Te’o came on for George Ford, Farrell moved to fly-half, and Jack Nowell came on for Jonathan Joseph with Elliot Daly switching to centre. England had already looked messy enough, and all the hokey cokey, coming and going should only have added to the confusion. But it did not. England kept their heads. And it all clicked.
From the lineout, which had been malfunctioning right through the match, they ran the ball through seven phases, the last of them ending in a sharp burst through the French line by Te’o to score the match-winning try.
Earlier in the week Jones had said he felt England had “the strongest bench in the world”, which seemed a stretch given that so many of the men who are usually on it had been bumped up into the starting XV to cover for other players – Chris Robshaw, George Kruis, Mako and Billy Vunipola – who were out injured. Maybe he was telling the truth that time too. The substitutes did not look all that good on the teamsheet, but they made all the difference in the final minutes.
Last week, Jones’ opposite number, Guy Novès, spoke about how impressed he was with the “efficiency” of the English team. “They might struggle during the game,” Novès had said, “but they still find a way to win.” It is, Novès remarked, a habit France, who in their last three matches would have beaten Australia, could have beaten New Zealand, and should have beaten England, just don’t have.
Novès has assembled a rough, tough pack around Guilhem Guirado and the startlingly gifted Louis Picamoles – man of the match here, despite being on the losing team – who dovetailed well with the two men either side of him in the scrum, Damien Chouly and Kevin Gourdon.
“We’re a go get ’em team,” said Jones, “but we sat away from ’em.” Some of that was rust, but the rest of it was just that the French forwards played so ferociously well in the first half. They bullied the English on to the back foot. They made particularly good use of their 22-stone prop Uini Atonio, who rolled through midfield like a loose barrel across a ship’s deck.
Ford had the misfortune to find himself squaring off against Atonio early in the match, and ended up pawing at his chest like a puppy asking his owner for another treat. Mind you, Nathan Hughes went in on Atonio next time, and even he bounced off him like a rubber ball.
Behind them, the French backs were led by those two arsonists out on the wings, Noa Nakaitaci and Virimi Vakatawa, who start fires each time they touch the ball. Vakatawa produced one dazzling bit of skill in the second half, when, chasing his own chip, he stretched out his right hand to tap the ball up into his grasp after a wayward bounce.
But what did all this brilliance add up to? A three-point defeat. Under Jones, England have acquired the happy knack of winning even when they don’t play well. And impressive as Nakaitaci, Vakatawa, Picamoles and the rest all were, there’s no skill in rugby quite so valuable as that.
• This article was amended on 6 February 2017 to correct the last name of Guy Novès, from Guy Novés as an earlier version said.
