England completed 2016 test rugby with a ideal winning record after overcoming a sluggish start and beating Australia 37-21 at Twickenham on Saturday.
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Eddie Jones says England still have improvements to make if they want to be classed alongside the World Cup-winning vintage of 2003.
“The only record we’re interested in is being the number one team in the world”.
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Though lamenting a second year in succession that has ended in a defeat at Twickenham, after their World Cup final loss to the All Blacks, Cheika is still enthused by the Wallabies’ progress. We’ve got the talent it’s just whether we get the desire and the cohesion right.
We’ve still got a hell of a lot of work to do to become the best team in the world. “That’s what we’re aiming to do”. “1020 days, there you go”.
As a player Wilkinson appeared to be a mix of the two players as he combined the physicality and kicking ability of Farrell with the soft hands and sniping runs of Ford to provide Sir Clive Woodward with a playmaker for which he could build his side around.
Michael Cheika’s side had already been defeated though, and Jones’s history boys were having a party.
A win for Australia would see them supplant the Grand Slam champions in second place in the global rankings. You get over it and for the year as a whole we have improved.”We’re hell-bent on achieving that”.Cheika said: “I do not think Glen is working with England any more, so any Aussie who would support England against Australia, especially a guy who has played for the Wallabies, there’s got to be a reason why”. We don’t have that yet.
“In four games we haven’t mentioned him once, and that shows the quality in this side and the strength in depth”.
But it has been all wins for England since Eddie Jones took over as head coach, including a 3-0 whitewash of the Wallabies down under in the summer.
The lead-up to the game saw Jones and Wallaby counterpart Michael Cheika, once team-mates at Sydney club Randwick, engage in plenty of verbal jousting.
The hype intensified when Jones was depicted as a clown in Saturday’s edition of The Australian newspaper.
Jones, with tongue firmly in cheek, said: “We are comfortable how we have behaved, and comfortable how we have represented rugby”.
“As a player, your pride is dented, you know the stick they must have had during that period in Australia must have been phenomenal. It’s probably because no one reads the paper now so they can’t afford to have a good cartoonist”.
“We still had that inner belief to turn things round and come back strongly and win”.
“They were always going to get some momentum, and the times we needed to break that momentum, we made errors”, he said.
Australia hit back through prop Sekope Kepu, Joseph rounded off a brilliant year for England with his second try of the night. “To win the second half 24-5 is a pretty fair effort”.
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“He will make those hard calls and, although he puts pressure on the players from himself, with the media he takes pressure off the players. We are heading in the right direction”. A few eyebrows were raised after Jones’ first game in charge against Scotland when he suggested Billy Vunipola could become the best number eight in the world.
