Eddie Jones has a vivid recollection of the buildup to his first game as England coach against Scotland in Edinburgh. Two years on, before Saturday’s Calcutta Cup reunion, he has been replaying the video footage to his squad this week and says it still sends a shiver down his spine. “After the first training run I was thinking: ‘Goodness me, what have I got myself into here? After 20 minutes they were just shot. They couldn’t run any more.”
Twenty-four wins in 25 Tests later and Jones, as might be imagined, is a good deal happier. Not totally satisfied, naturally, because he never is, but reassured that his squad have made sufficient percentage improvement inside two years to make any successful stock market analyst blink. “We’ve been looking at a bit of data and, conservatively, we’ve improved 40%. Conservatively. And we’ve still got another 20% to go.”
All part of the sabre-rattling Calcutta Cup hype, perhaps? Or perhaps not. Ominously for Scotland this England team appear entirely convinced by their own gathering momentum, which is half the battle at this level. For that 2016 fixture they had only four training runs under Jones before the Murrayfield fixture in which they sneaked home 15-9. The difference in their self-belief now, regardless of where they are due to play, is almost tangible.
Jones and his conditioning staff, clearly, have to take a lot of credit but, as the head coach points out, it is the players who have done the hardest yards. No one is yet proclaiming them the best side in the world but they are increasingly among the hardest to beat, arguably a more practically useful yardstick. There is also a clarity in terms of mindset for which English rugby has seldom been renowned, some feat considering 13 of the starting XV from two years ago are in the matchday 23 now. The faces are largely the same but, mentally, there has been a transformation. “They’ve probably learned more from themselves than me,” Jones says. “They’ve learned to develop a mindset to find a way to win Test rugby.”
Out of this renewed sense of purpose has also emerged a collective desire to explore their physical limits which their Australian guru, for one, struggled to locate when he turned up. “They weren’t fit. They wanted to play a system of attack and a system of defence and I thought: ‘This is going to be hard work.’ I was massively surprised how quickly they changed. It is hard for good players to change and it is a great credit to them that they have been able to accept they needed to.
“The basis of Test match rugby is physical condition. You’ve got to be fit enough to play. And when you win games, as we have consistently in the last 20 minutes, part of it is fitness and part of it is tactical nous. How many games have you seen the All Blacks win in the last 20 minutes? Plenty. And that’s because they practise it. We practise it now, too. We’ve got the base now to be able to do that.”
Whether that will necessarily apply to Nathan Hughes, only just back from injury and unlikely to last the entire 80 minutes at No 8 in place of the injured Sam Simmonds, is possibly debatable. With Joe Marler also returning to the bench following suspension, however, England do not look a team ripe for slaughter – unless it is them about to do the slaughtering.
Last year they stuck 61 points on Scotland at Twickenham and the captain, Dylan Hartley, believes they are ready for any eventuality. “I’ve got confidence in my team-mates that when the going gets tough we’ll come out the other side,” said the hooker, set to win his 92nd cap and replace Jonny Wilkinson as England’s second most-capped player.
Those wondering exactly what kind of sporting team Jones would like to recreate, meanwhile, will be surprised by the answer. As a kid back in Sydney, Jones was an admirer of the West Ham side of the 1970s and can reel off the names just like that. “I used to love Billy Bonds, Trevor Brooking, Frank Lampard, all those guys. They had those big tough defenders and Brooking was the artist at the front. He always reminded me of Greg Chappell playing football, a bit of an artist, and I liked that claret-and-light-blue jersey.”
An ideal Jones team, then, has to contain a bit of mongrel as well as its pedigree champs. For every Brooking-type creative figure in the current England rugby squad – “Anthony Watson is a bit like that. And Jonathan Joseph. They’re artists in their own way” – the relentless Jones wants someone snapping at opposition heels. “We’re developing a team that is robust, a team that is mentally tough and has a lot of leadership. That’s going to be the key growth area as we go forward. How can the players absorb tight situations, fight their way out of it and find a way to win?” Saturday, he hopes, will reinforce just how far England have already come.
