England coach Eddie Jones had the last laugh after a 37-21 win over his native Australia at Twickenham in London on Saturday.
Prior to the match, the Australian had depicted former Wallaby boss Jones as a clown, but after England made it 13 wins out of 13 under Jones for a perfect year, the coach said: “Firstly, I’d just like to apologize, I’ve forgotten my red nose, but I’ll get it later and put it on.”
England’s victory, their fourth over the Wallabies this year following a 3-0 series win in Australia in June, was far from straightforward.
Photo: Reuters
They were 10-0 behind early on after a Bernard Foley penalty and Sefa Naivalu’s converted try gave Australia the edge, but England’s pack gradually got into gear and the hosts, with Owen Farrell landing all six of his kicks, fought back.
Jonathan Joseph, Farrell’s partner at center, scored two tries, with Marland Yarde and impressive scrumhalf Ben Youngs also crossing Australia’s line.
“Australia came out hard in the first half — we knew that was going to happen and they played some very good rugby,” Jones said. “We just had to hang in there and we did. We got to halftime 16-13 [behind], recuperated, and got our heads on a bit better. In the second half we did the basics really well. To win the second half 24-5 is a pretty fair effort.”
However, Jones, speaking after England had equaled their national record run of 14 straight wins, set in 2003 when they won a Rugby World Cup final against an Australia team he was coaching at the time, said England still have work to do if they are to replace world champions New Zealand as the game’s No. 1 Test side.
“It’s a good step forward for us, but we can’t get too carried away,” he said. “We’ve still got a hell of a lot of work to do to become the best team in the world. All the players realize that, but the great thing is we’re developing a real desire to go there.”
Asked what had changed in the second half, Jones replied: “We just had to work that little bit harder.”
“We started to stop them at the gain line, the big No. 8 [Lopeti Tomani] didn’t carry so much over the line and that put them under pressure in attack, and when they’re under pressure in attack they gave us mistakes and gave us some points.” said Jones, who claimed England’s 2003 team were a “much better side than we are at the moment.”
He said records were of no concern as he is looking to guide England to glory at the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan.
“The only record we are interested to beat is to be the No. 1 team in the world and to do that we have to win the World Cup,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jones said he felt no special joy in beating Australia, labeling Saturday’s match as “just another game of Test footy.”
Defeat meant Australia, who knocked England out of the Rugby World Cup before going down in the final to New Zealand, have lost nine of their 15 Tests this year.
“Everyone knows the game goes for 80 minutes, so you have to play both halves as best you can,” Australia coach Michael Cheika said. “We’ve played some great rugby over the year and we’ve played some poor rugby. The first half was good, but we needed to score more points. In the second half, we needed to react to stop the momentum that England created.”
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