Eddie Jones has warned England’s record‑equalling players they will be summarily dropped if they allow their standards to slip next year. Jones is also insisting they start their 2017 Six Nations title defence with more collective intent than last season when he felt they were too fearful of possible failure.
Having presided over England’s first unbeaten calendar year since 1992, Jones has already told his squad that anyone easing off between now and their next game against France at Twickenham on 4 February risks being jettisoned. “We’ve had a bit of a chat about the fact that if you don’t keep performing you won’t be in the team. If players aren’t hungry and you see it in their performance they won’t be here. We have enough depth to change the squad if we need to.”
With Maro Itoje and others set to be available having missed the autumn series, Jones also wants to see the entire team readjust their sights upwards in the Six Nations: “There’s a tipping point in the team when you get six, seven, eight players with that absolute desire to want to do well. If you’re not in that group you tend to fall out. That’s how great teams keep on getting better.
“We haven’t got that tipping point yet but we’re moving towards it. Being an outsider to the Six Nations last season I thought there was an absolute fear of losing rather than wanting to win. What we want to do in this Six Nations is go out there and win it.”
To collect back-to-back grand slams, Jones believes England’s set-piece work will need sharpening but is not focusing on whether the team’s 14-game run can be extended into a world record for a Tier One nation. “The only thing I’m interested in now is winning the Six Nations and to win the Six Nations we need more consistency in our set piece,” Jones said.
“I want to have the most dominant scrum. I don’t have hope. ‘Hope’ is a bad word … it’s like people saying: ‘I was hoping to see you.’ It means they don’t really want to see you.”
He is also confident England will send a big contingent of players on the British & Irish Lions tour to New Zealand next summer, in addition to the forwards coach Steve Borthwick.
“I don’t have a target but if we’re travelling well we should have close to 15 players in there,” Jones said, suggesting his players would be less affected by nerves if the Six Nations boiled down to an Anglo-Irish showdown against a strong Ireland side in Dublin. “We’ve had two big games this year where the result mattered a lot and we’ve made the same mistakes twice. I expect the third time it happens we won’t.”
Ben Youngs also said England are not yet satisfied after rounding off their year with a 37-21 success against Australia. “We want to keep going,” the scrum-half said. “We’ve got 14 wins now but there’s nothing at the end of that. There’s still plenty to go for this side.
“Eddie always says he wants us to be the No1 team in the world and so do the players. We’ll continue to do whatever we need to do to try and get there.”