PARIS : Coach Eddie Jones remained upbeat despite Saturday’s 25-13 defeat in Paris making it two seasons in a row England have lost three of their five Six Nation games.
England were second-best for most of the match in Paris as France secured their first title for 12 years as they finished the campaign in third place after also losing to Scotland and Ireland.
Only for a brief period early in the second half did England have any sort of front foot in the game, and they were eventually well beaten.
“I’m disappointed for the fans, for the players, I obviously haven’t done a good enough job, I accept that, but we’re moving in the right direction. The results aren’t good enough. When you rebuild a team it takes time,” Jones said.
“France are deserved champions, they are the best team, but we had enough chances to win that game, we just didn’t put them away, we were not quite clinical enough in doing that. That has been a little bit of the story of us in the Six Nations, we have put ourselves in position to win the three games we have lost but not been clinical enough, not been good enough, particularly in some of our clean-out work to win those games.
“So that is disappointing but the spirit we showed is going to make sure this team keeps moving in the right direction.”
Jones has spent most of the campaign insisting that his “young team” are a work in progress but they struggled again to build any sort of sustained attacking threat and spent most of the night in Paris trying to repel French attacks.
“We are not far away but we are far away and the effort it takes to bridge that gap is important. We have got a lot of good young players coming through and some of the older guys are starting to play some really good rugby again so we are going to have a good blend going through to the World Cup.”
Jones’s upbeat analysis is at odds with England’s performance as this year’s third place finish comes after a fifth-place last season.
England’s 2003 World Cup-winning coach Clive Woodward said that Jones’s constant selectional tweaking is at the heart of the issue.
“The big problem is that when the squad gather on Mondays after the debrief from the Saturday nobody has got any idea what the back division for the next game will be,” Woodward wrote in Mail online. “And when the squad gather at the start of each season, nobody is really sure who the coaches below Eddie Jones will be. The player churn and state of flux among the outside backs and coaching staff eventually becomes unsettling.
“In every great side I have encountered a hierarchy must become evident. The Gun XV will trip off your tongue.”
(Reporting by Mitch Philips; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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