England have secured a Grand Slam and completed a 3-0 series whitewash of Australia since Jones took charge last December, but the 56-year-old knows that to overhaul the All Blacks they must improve further.
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“We’ve got to get fitter, there’s no doubt about that”, said Jones, who also mentioned technique at the breakdown as critical. They develop their coaches in New Zealand, they coach at Super Rugby level, become successful, go overseas and coach in the northern hemisphere.
“They’re good, they’re bloody good, but they are beatable. They’ll want to bounce back and they want to get a win so we’ll be preparing as we always do and we’ll be expecting something tight”, he told reporters in Christchurch yesterday.
“They’ll get to understand the Maori side step, the Samoan side step, the Fijian side step, Tongan side step. they’ll get it all”.
Although New Zealand ultimately ran out 57-22 winners last weekend, the Pumas had them on the ropes for the first 50 minutes with a hugely physical forward effort allied to some penetrating running out wide.
“They came second the year before and I coached them and they came 10th”. So they get a full round of education.
Rugby World Cup victor Will Greenwood, who is assisting the coaching team at Maidenhead on a regular basis, was also involved in the session which attracted more than 50 players from the club. They control every bit of rugby and every law that’s changed they drive it.
“They are a smart country”. Steve Hansen and Graham Henry both had stints in Wales which rounded off their coaching experience.
“They go back to New Zealand and then they are ready to coach the All Blacks”. We haven’t done anything yet, we’re not number one in the world, so we still have a lot to aspire to.
“Our motivation is just to get better”, Jones said.
The Red Rose chief has invited women’s hockey champion coach Danny Kerry to speak to his backroom staff about how defied the odds in Brazil with a shock finals win against red-hot favourites Holland. The core values of the game of rugby align perfectly with our own and the England Rugby partnership comes as a natural progression of the work we are doing, and have already done, to support rugby.
“The differences between teams is never that great”.
“We’re also going to visit judo in a couple of weeks and we’ve had conversations with cycling”. “When you do that those differences are small”.
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