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England coach Jones: We've used up all our get-out-of-jail cards
Eddie Jones joked that England may not have another comeback in them after they completed a second dramatic Six Nations turnaround in as many weeks to extend their remarkable unbeaten run.
A 76th-minute try from Elliot Daly saw England edge out Wales 21-16 in Cardiff, seven days after they had prevailed by a narrow margin against France thanks to a late Ben Te’o score.
“I think we’ve used up all our get-out-of-jail cards,” said a smiling Jones in his post-match news conference on Saturday. “Against Italy [England’s next opponents], we don’t want to be in that situation we were in today.”
The reigning Six Nations champions have now won 16 Tests in a row, all but one of those successes coming under Jones, and the head coach found plenty of positives from the latest triumph.
“Firstly, our first 20 and the last 20. Our first 20 we were one or two passes away from maybe scoring three tries. And the last 20 we just showed outstanding composure to win that game of rugby,” added the Australian.
“The second thing was our grit; we’ve now become a team that is hard to beat. We’ve got characters in there that don’t know how to get beaten and that was evident.
“Obviously we want to improve our consistency, we had a good first 20, a great last 20 but the middle 40 was a bit indifferent.”
Jones, who said lock Courtney Lawes looked like a “human ice-pack” following his exertions against Wales, revealed changes to his starting XV were likely for the visit of Italy to Twickenham in a fortnight.
“We’ll look at playing a different sort of team. I’ve got some ideas of how we want to play against Italy and I want to change it up a bit,” he explained.
“I want to actually play a different sort of game against them. It’s a great chance for us to do something a bit different, so yes, there could be some selection changes. But not because I’m unhappy with the guys that played today, because I want to keep developing the team.
“It looks like we’ll have Anthony Watson back next week, which is fantastic, so we’re slowly getting a little bit stronger.”
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