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Why Wales wunderkind Louis Rees-Zammit turned down an approach from Eddie Jones

By PA
Eddie Jones and Louis Rees-Zammit. (Photos by Getty Images)

Eddie Jones attempted to persuade Louis Rees-Zammit to choose England over Wales and having failed in his pursuit, he hopes the wing’s explosive development stalls on Saturday.

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Rees-Zammit’s duel with Gloucester team-mate Jonny May promises to be one of the highlights of the round three Guinness Six Nations title clash at the Principality Stadium.

Although one of the quickest wings in the game, May admits that “on a good day I can just about keep up with Louis. He’s incredibly fast, as fast as I’ve come across”.

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Rees-Zammit’s clinical finishing has been underlined by a haul of four tries in six Wales appearances, including two in the recent victory over Scotland, and Jones knew from an early stage the 20-year-old was a talent worth courting.

“I gave him a ring. I heard he was very Welsh and wanted to play for Wales and said if he was interested, we would be,” Jones said.

“He had to do five years qualification in terms of residency and a young guy like him is not going to sit around for five years.

“I wished him good luck and I’m pleased he’s doing well – I just hope he does not do too well against us.

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“Like any young player, there are areas of his game he is deficient in and we have to be good enough to find those areas. I am sure Jonny will share his thoughts on him and we will talk to him.

“Louis is progressing nicely and Jonny has been at the top of his game for three or four years, he was close to being the best left wing at the World Cup. Jonny constantly scores tries out of nowhere. It will be a great match-up.”

Meanwhile, Jones has hit back at a claim by England’s most capped full-back Mike Brown that his players are afraid to challenge the Australian head coach, adding “Everyone has heard the scare stories and you don’t want to get on the wrong side of him”.

Jones said: “How do you know they have not been challenging me? It was a surprising comment by Mike. We have a shared responsibility here. There is a forum for players to speak up.

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“It would be hard for me to say we have a dictatorial situation, which is what Mike Brown is alluding to. He is entitled to his opinion.

“Within our team, we have shared responsibility and do not hide away from that. I will give them a direction but ultimately the players decide the direction we go in.”

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J
JW 52 minutes ago
'They smelt it': Scott Robertson says Italy sensed All Blacks' vulnerability

Even the 20/30 cappers did too I reckon.


IDK, I think Jordan has a limited life span in this side unless he can develop more to his game. Like you go on to mention, I think theyres more important things to worry about than the effectiveness of someone's extra strings, or secondary components to their game.


Bash backs are Fosters thing, and to a large part they've made it work. Theyre now one of the best teams in the world.


They boy's trucked it up a bit against Italy in the redzone, and against France, wasn't that effective without the right players probably.


Try and take a look at it this way. Dissapointed Havili and Blackadder were in the side? Havili despite clearly shown that he can't do what the team needs at 12 was kept on for the RWC. Back goes down and he brings in Blackadder who doesn't play. Refuses to drop Christie when he should and look who starts this season. Beauden Barret not playing well enough to keep his 10 jersey but we gotta keep him in the side. Weve only got one 8, we stuff developing another I'll just play Ardie every game.


This years team wasn't burdened overly with injuries but they were in every position Razor might have wanted to try and development, severely limiting options. I'm not defending Razor as there was also plenty of other opportunity to make up for it and he was a little gunshy, but I'm also not going to overly criticise him because he chose cohesion over a black slate.

How long are we going to keep blaming All Black failings on Ian Foster.

I think more and more people are on board with it being time to try alternatives, but then again, how would they have reacted to a loss against Italy? 😉

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