Eddie Jones has backed his England side to keep building towards next year’s World Cup after they earned a series win in Australia.
A 21-17 victory in Sydney in the deciding third Test meant England came from behind, after disappointment in the Perth opener, to take the series and provide the team with a much-needed bost.
It has been a poor 2022 overall for England, another below-par Six Nations campaign followed by a heavy defeat to the Barbarians in the final match before the team flew out to Australia.
But it’s now a second successive series win Down Under, following the whitewash in 2016, and Jones believes the team are in a good place with 14 months to go until the 2023 World Cup.
“It is a really positive step, we always felt the team was going in the right direction, sometimes results don’t reflect that,” Jones told Sky Sports.
“At the end we had six players with under 10 caps – this is a young inexperienced squad and to have an experience like this is fantastic. They understand what it is like to win a series away.
“Some of our guys have now won two series in Australia. I am so proud of their efforts.
“It is like training a race horse, we don’t want to be at our best until the World Cup finals, we need to keep building the base, the depth, the competition and our style of play. We are in a good position.”
It was not a confident start to the series decider in England by Sydney, with a number of cheap penalties given away in the early stages, and Australia were the better team for large periods of the match.
But England were clinical when their moments came and Jones was full of pride after watching his team grind out a victory under huge pressure.
“The big difference between the first and third Tests were that we were not at our best but we kept fighting, kept in the game and our tackling particularly at the end got us a result,” Jones said.
“We stuck at it, it was a different game for us, the conditions were not fantastic for rugby and we had to adapt to that. We adapted as well as we could, we did not have the benefit of a training run.
“We were a little bit off, but we kept fighting. A great effort by the leaders – Courtney, Genge, Owen and Jack, and our finishers were outstanding.”
