England coach Eddie Jones said his side were only “just starting” after they thrashed Scotland 61-21 at Twickenham in London on Saturday to retain their Six Nations title.
Jonathan Joseph scored a hat-trick as England ran in seven tries against sorry Scotland, with the victory seeing Jones’ men equal New Zealand’s record of 18 successive Test wins by a leading rugby union nation.
“I’ve got to give credit to the players,” Jones told ITV. “They’ve worked hard and learned new ways, and when you’re a professional player it’s always hard to learn new things and they’ve been very open-minded.”
Photo: Reuters
The Australian, yet to lose a match as England coach since taking over following the team’s lackluster first-round exit on home soil at the 2015 Rugby World Cup, added: “The exciting thing for us is that we’re only just starting.”
“We’re one year into a four-year project, and we’re going to get better and better,” said Jones, whose ultimate goal with England is to win the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan.
England will surpass world champions New Zealand’s record if they beat Ireland in Dublin at the weekend, a match where a win would also see them complete back-to-back Grand Slams.
“Next week is about the Grand Slam and we are going to focus very closely on that,” Jones said.
England had not led at halftime in any of their previous matches in the Six Nations, but they were sharp from the start against Scotland, with Joseph opening the scoring in the third minute.
“We started well and generally our intensity in the game was pretty good,” Jones said. “Against Italy [in England’s previous match] we were ready to play a good game of rugby, but as you know we didn’t play rugby. Today, we got a chance to play rugby and I was really pleased with their efforts.”
It was largely one-way traffic after Joseph’s opening score, with Anthony Watson, Billy Vunipola and Danny Care (twice) also crossing for England in a match in which center Owen Farrell kicked 26 points.
England’s final tally was the largest number of points either side had scored in the 146-year history of rugby union’s oldest international fixture. The 40-point winning margin also equaled the previous best in 135 matches between the archrivals set by England in a 43-3 victory in 2001.
Scotland arrived in London bidding for the Triple Crown and with hopes of a first Twickenham win since 1983, but they were simply overpowered and outclassed, with Scotland captain John Barclay slamming his side as “useless.”
“We just didn’t show up today,” the back-row forward said. “The discipline was very poor in the first half and there were soft tries. We are trying to move away from that tag of plucky losers, but that wasn’t even that. That was useless.”
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