The Eddie Jones England project is hanging by a thread. ‘Glorified friendly’ or not, shorn of Leicester and Saracens players due to the Premiership final or not, shipping 51 points and crumbling to a 31-point defeat - the heaviest of the Jones era - at Twickenham, against a scratch side who spent their preparation week on the sauce in Monaco and played 45 minutes with 14 men, must set alarm bells ringing.
Although, given that the half-hearted initial RFU review into Jones’s England following the 2022 Six Nations concluded that they were “encouraged by the solid progress the team has made during this Six Nations campaign”, it probably won’t. As a reminder, the “strong positive steps forward” the RFU witnessed came in a championship where England won two and lost three games while scoring eight tries, which was 12 months after a Six Nations where England won two and lost three games while scoring 12 tries. Solid progress, indeed…
