Two warm-up games down, two to go for England on the long, meandering road to Japan. If their two August warm-up games against Wales have reinforced anything, it is the folly of arriving at too many hard and fast conclusions a month before the World Cup kicks off. Which is fortunate for England: fail to improve on certain aspects of Saturday’s 13-6 defeat in Cardiff and they will fall well short in Japan.
In no particular order, they leaked a whole heap of penalties, lost the aerial battle and the breakdown, saw their driving maul neutered at a critical moment late on and generally lacked the snap and crackle they had displayed in the reverse fixture. So why did Eddie Jones look so content? Possibly because he now knows that, even when England are playing poorly with a weakened side in a hostile stadium, none of the world’s top teams can swat them easily aside.
Written by Robert Kitson
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/18/eddie-jones-england-optimism-tight-margins under the title “Eddie Jones’s England have cause for optimism in world of tight margins | Robert Kitson”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
