Six Nations: Head coach Eddie Jones looks at the bigger picture for England
Jones is flying in the Georgian team for a two-day scrummaging session designed at making his England side the best set-piece pack in world rugby.
“We’ve got Georgia coming, we’ll do scrums and lineouts against them on Tuesday and Wednesday,” said Jones following a 12-6 victory over Wales that maintained England’s Grand Slam challenge.
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Hide Ad“We want to have the best scrum and they’re the biggest, ugliest scrum pack in the world, so why would we want to scrum against them?
“We’re good friends with the coaches there, they were keen on the idea and it suits us in a fallow week.
“We want to win the Six Nations, but we also want to use this as a trial for the World Cup.
“So it’s a great opportunity for us to get some real quality scrum practice in.”
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Hide AdJones took pride in the way his England side dug deep to withstand a Wales fightback in the second half on Saturday, restricting the visitors to just three points in a classic Six Nations encounter. “It was a tight old Test match, we hung in there, had opportunities to put them away and, full credit to them, they didn’t let us put them away, but we were in control most of the time, which was the pleasing thing for us,” said Jones.
“We were playing against a good team (in Wales). We expected it to be tough and we wanted it to be tough, and that’s how we played the game.”
Ireland’s thrashing of Italy in Dublin gives them a slender advantage on points difference over England with the two nations’ Twickenham date on March 17 looking increasingly like the title decider.
Not that Jones is looking that far ahead. He said: “If you’d have asked us at the start of the tournament where we’d want to be it’s right here; two from two, one with a bonus point and the other game an arm wrestle that we managed to win. So we’ve gained experience of a loose game and a tight game, which sets us up for the next game.”
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