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Moody tells Telfer to focus on Scotland after Jones jibe

Land Rover ambassador Lewis Moody

Lewis Moody said Jim Telfer should be more concerned about how Scotland become a force in international rugby rather than insult England, who will look to break new ground in their Six Nations opener against France on Saturday.

Last week, Scotland great Telfer stoked the fires of the old rivalry by making disparaging remarks about England and head coach Eddie Jones.

Jones responded by saying Telfer is entitled to make personal comments about him, but launched a staunch defence of the Twickenham crowd saying: “To say the fans at Twickenham are arrogant is absolutely ridiculous. 

“I’ve coached all around the world and I think the fans at Twickenham are passionate, loyal, reasonably well educated and provide a great atmosphere. 

“It’s one of the greatest rugby grounds in the world. If he doesn’t like that, don’t come.”

And Moody, a World Cup winner with England in 2003, says perceptions of arrogance are unfair and any team that has won 14 straight matches is entitled to be confident.

“I think sometimes England need to be more confident in their ability, if you’re going to go out and win games you don’t do it by not being confident,” he told Omnisport. 

“Arrogance is a label other people put on England, players don’t label themselves arrogant, they go in there confident because they are on an incredibly successful winning streak. 

“I have no problem that England should sing and dance about being successful, too long the British mentality is about knocking people who are succeeding, why not embrace the fact that the side are doing incredibly well at the minute.

“I’d say every England player that goes on the pitch shows respect by going out there and playing their absolute best against every side they come across.

“That’s a classic Scottish mentality, that’s what they call on pre-game to wind themselves up rather than focusing on what they need to do which is focus on what is going to win the game.”

If England can begin the start of their Six Nations defence by beating France at Twickenham it will mark the first time in their history they have won 15 straight games – 14 of which will have been under Jones’ stewardship.

Moody has been particularly impressed with England’s strength in depth and the way Jones has dealt with injuries in key positions.

“I am genuinely excited about the first game,” he added. 

“England have had such a great run of form, equalling that successful winning streak of 14, they’ve had a Grand Slam, a first series win down under in Australia, so it’s an exciting build up. 

“As always Eddie Jones has to deal with a number of injuries that the Premiership structure [brings] but because of the way Jones has been able to draft in other players because of injury, suddenly the strength in depth that England are witnessing is something quite special. 

“You lose Anthony Watson who is probably first choice, but you’ve got Elliot Daly or Jack Nowell to choose from – and Jonny May. 

“That’s an exciting position to be in. I’m surprised they didn’t go with Jack Nowell but maybe they wanted to give Elliot Daly a chance to redeem that red card [against Argentina in the November internationals].”

 

Lewis Moody is a Land Rover ambassador. Land Rover has a heritage in supporting rugby at all levels, from grassroots to the elite. Through its ‘We Deal In Real’ campaign, Land Rover continues to shine a light on the people, players and clubs at the heart and soul of the game.

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J
JW 1 hour ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.


Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.


So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).


You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.


I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?

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f
fl 4 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"

I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.

But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.


Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.


"I'm afraid to say"

Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!

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