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England fell to another defeat on Saturday night, just as everyone knew they would. Everyone knew France would be too good.
Everyone knew that this England team under the guidance of Eddie Jones had become less than the sum of its parts some time ago.
England were the stooges in the Stade de France as the fans went wild and acclaimed their country’s first Grand Slam for 12 years. This is what England have been reduced to.
For the second Six Nations in a row, Eddie Jones’ England lost three of their five games
For France, the sky is the limit. They will be among the favourites to win the World Cup on home turf next year. England? They are heading in the opposite direction.
For the second Six Nations in a row, they lost three of their five games. They were lucky to finish third. Place them alongside this France team and Andy Farrell’s Ireland and they look one-dimensional and dull.
It is not good enough. Anyone can see that. Since England lost the World Cup final in November 2019 and won the Six Nations the following spring, they have gone downhill fast. Exhausted by the intensity of Jones, perhaps, they have stopped responding to him. It is hard to discern a plan in the way England are developing. It is harder to discern any progress.
We are told over and over again that the Rugby Football Union does not have any plans to replace Jones before the World Cup and that he retains their confidence and that they have not thought about sounding out replacements. That is as baffling as it is dispiriting. What we are looking at here, as England stumble to the end of another pathetic campaign, is a mute acceptance of mediocrity.
France won the Six Nations for the first time since 2010 after a 25-13 win over England
It felt as though Jones had picked a team to save his own skin, not to move the side forward. George Furbank was picked as a rookie full-back and there were times when he played like one.
It wasn’t his fault but his selection was a sign of Jones’s desperation. Sir Clive Woodward said it was ‘crazy’. Orchestrated by Jones himself, it was rugby’s version of Operation Save Big Dog. It didn’t work.
England never got close enough to France to put them under pressure. France’s 25-13 win was a fair reflection of their superiority. This felt like the game when Jones’ tenure as England head coach had run its course. It was at this stage in the last World Cup cycle that South Africa replaced Allister Coetzee with Rassie Erasmus and they went on to win the tournament in Japan. It is not too late.
England have guts and they have defiance but there is very little imagination and very little flair in this side, Marcus Smith aside. It often feels as if there is not allowed to be.
England under Jones do not have an Antoine Dupont, the mercurial scrum half who scored the critical French try on Saturday night and who Matt Dawson, who knows a thing or two about scrum halves, compared to Zinedine Zidane. Artistry does not flourish in this England team.
Gael Fickou scored France’s first try of the evening after Romain Ntamack’s bouncing pass
England’s attacking revolution will not be televised. In fact, England’s attacking revolution will probably never happen at all. It is starting to look more and more as if that was an idea dreamed up as a public relations device, not a nod to long-term intent.
Paris had been glorious on Saturday in the springtime. In the Jardins du Luxembourg, Parisians sat in chairs beside the pavilions, their faces turned towards the sun. The seats outside the cafes near the Pantheon were thronged with locals embracing the warmth. England didn’t catch that mood. England are heading towards a bleak midwinter.
A win might have salvaged a little pride and added some gloss to another disappointing campaign but this defeat stripped all England’s problems bare. This is a team lacking direction and purpose and belief. It is a team the sun rarely touches, a team that spends too much time in the shadows. It is a team that looks as if it is on a road to nowhere.
Francois Cros got the ball at the back of the ruck and jumped over to score France’s second try
This is a team, and a coach, that is supposed to be building towards the World Cup in France next year but the truth is that they are not building towards anything. There is no sense of progress. None. They are not growing. They are crumbling. They are stuck in reverse, getting further and further and further from where they need to be and falling further and further behind upwardly mobile rivals like France and Ireland.
Perhaps keeping faith with Jones is just about the money. Perhaps England are just hostages to the fortune that they pay Jones to coach the side. It has got to the point where that is the only logical reason why he is staying in post.
England throw money at their national side in rugby union like no other nation and yet their results in the last couple of years have made them a laughing stock.
This is not a plucky underdog that Jones has coached into punching above its weight. The investment that has gone into this team should make them favourites for the Six Nations every year.
Instead England finished fifth last year and are among the also-rans again this year. They are under-achieving massively and the buck has to stop with the coach.
World Rugby player of the year Antoine Dupont showed his class as he scored France’s third try
There does not appear to be any method or any coherent plan going forward. Nothing like the consistency of selection, for instance, that Fabien Galthie has adhered to with France.
‘Jones is still playing Henry Slade out of position,’ former England back Austin Healey said. ‘He can’t decide whether Joe Marchant is best on the wing or in the centre and Elliot Daly gets parachuted in all over the place.’
It is a mess. It feels as if Jones picks or drops players to make a point to the media or to underline the idea he is a maverick whose moves you cannot anticipate.
One day, he signals the start of a brave new world by picking players like Marcus Smith and Harry Randall in midfield. The next, Randall is sacrificed for the box-kicking relentlessness of Ben Youngs. It is a common theme.
They talk a good game. Sure they do. Jones has always been particularly good at that, although the faux-bonhomie has been wearing a bit thin for a while now. His latest excuse is that England are being criticised because he is Australian. Er, no, Eddie, England are being criticised because they keep finding ways to lose rugby matches.
Freddie Steward ran over in the second half as England grew into the contest in Paris
‘One of the major problems,’ Healey said, ‘is that Jones is always coming up with good excuses. There has always been a complaint, a theme, a change of staff. As an England supporter, I am bored of his excuses.’
He is right. To listen to Jones and some of the players, you could be forgiven for thinking England are the best team in the world. They are a long way from that. A long, long way.
Sir Clive Woodward, the man who led England to its solitary World Cup triumph two decades ago, had said earlier in the day that the only way England could win was if France had a man sent off. That didn’t happen. The only hope left was divine intervention. England went into the game needing a miracle. That didn’t happen, either.
It wasn’t a surprise. It was utterly, dispiritingly predictable. Most observers called it when they saw the team Jones had picked. ‘His selection suggests he might have had too much sun in this glorious Paris spring weather,’ Woodward wrote.
It is time for a change.
