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Eddie Jones: 'For the most part I thought we dominated the game'
By
PA
Eddie Jones insisted England’s problems are fixable after they made a humbling start to the autumn by falling 30-29 to Argentina.
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The Pumas halted a 10-match losing run in the fixture dating back to 2009 and claimed only their second ever victory at Twickenham after Emiliano Boffelli slotted the winning penalty in the 70th minute.
The rivals meet again in their opening game of next year’s World Cup and Jones denied this result is evidence of a deeper malaise within England, who face tougher tests this autumn against New Zealand and South Africa.
“The World Cup is 11 months away and a lot happens in 11 months. As a lot can happen in a week,” Jones said.
“I’m not sitting here thinking we’ve got really strong problems within the team. For the most part I thought we dominated the game.
“If we didn’t, then I might be thinking people have good rights to get stuck into us and then we’d have a bit of a fight.
“But I don’t need the fight because I feel like the team went out and played how they wanted to.
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“But we made some silly mistakes and we can change those things pretty easily. They’re all controllable. There are no real, big, structural issues within our game.
“You always want to have a more potent attack, always, but sometimes it doesn’t go like that. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to get it right.
“We’ve got to tidy it up a bit but we made enough line breaks to win probably two games, but we didn’t finish them off, which is an area we can always improve on.
“It’s a great opportunity for us now because we’re under the pump a bit which is good and I think we’ll respond really well to that. I’m looking forward to it.”
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Argentina struck with two tries in quick succession by Boffelli and Santiago Carreras to seize a 24-16 lead with 30 minutes to go and they had the composure to close out the win before a subdued Twickenham crowd.
The TMO checked for a knock-on in the build up to Carreras’ breakaway try and while refusing to condemn referee Andrew Brace, Jones suggested that it should not have stood.
“The referee made the decision. When you throw a pass and it goes that far behind, the best players in the world don’t generally do that so there was probably something else that happened,” said Jones in reference to Owen Farrell’s pass that was intended for Billy Vunipola but instead landed on the floor.
Jones revealed that Manu Tuilagi’s 67th-minute departure from the pitch was because of a blister and reported no further injuries.
Argentina coach Michael Cheika was delighted with a first win over old sparring partner Jones after losing seven matches to him as Australia boss.
“It was good and it was tense. I really liked the way the guys prepared this week. They had a really good attitude about them,” Cheika said.
“It was tricky too because no one in that side had won against England before so you’ve got to combine the mental side of it with the tactical and the technical side of it.
“It’s a great feeling and really nice for the lads to get that opportunity to have that experience here.”
England looked world class in every area, apart from (i) the scrum; (ii) a number of individual errors; and (iii) their lack of penetrative runners
in terms of (i) and (ii), this match was probably a bit of an outlier, given england normally do the basics really well
in terms of (iii), this is looking like a pretty significant long term issue for England. A team like France can sometimes allow themselves to be outplayed, because they know that 2 or 3 times a match their wingers will create something magical. England on the other hand can dominate matches (regardless of whether you think they did this weekend or not) but still end up losing because they just don't create or convert try scoring opportunities.
there are three ways that it can go from here
A - England persist in playing the same way. There's a really good chance that they beat Japan, New Zealand, and South Africa, because Japan and New Zealand are easier to bully with hard running than Argentina are, and because South Africa are poorly set up to play a kicking game. This good run placates the fans, but the underlying issues remain.
B - it turns out that actually England have been rehearsing a set of killer strike plays off of 1st phase, and Jones just wanted to hold them back to surprise New Zealand and South Africa. In hindsight this looks like a stupid strategy given it lead the loss against argentina, but ends up working out pretty well.
C - Jones Nowell and replaces him with Freeman or Arundell. England suddenly gain the ability to score from anywhere, but become slightly weaker defensively and at the breakdown. This is probably the most likely way for England to quickly improve, but could undermine elements of the game plan Jones has been building.
Rather stupid to have lost after dominating. Eddie never learns!