England can improve: Jones

Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 2:30 PM
Beth Newman
by Beth Newman

England lifted a 41-year drought on Saturday night but coach Eddie Jones is adamant they can still improve.

The English will go into Saturday’s second Test in Melbourne with a chance to take the series but Jones was focused on keeping his side’s mind focused on the next game.

“All we’ve done tonight is given us one more game in this series so we head to Melbourne, which is the most important game now,” he said.

“We didn’t play well today. We were happy with the results but we didn’t play well.

“We can improve significantly in terms of our ball carry and second man, we can improve significantly in terms of our defence spacing and we can still put more set piece pressure on Australia.

The Wallabies were on top early and Jones said his side struggled to keep pace before

“We struggled in the first 10 minutes of the game,” he said.

“Australia put a lot of pace on the ball which we don’t encounter in games in England and it took us a while to find the pace of the game.

“Once we found the pace of the game I thought our next 60 minutes probably 45 minutes of that we played some good rugby.

“We gave the Wallabies some easy tries and we’ll need to do some work on our defence but we’ve made history today.it’s not good enough for us, it’s all about next week.”

Jones praised his player’s decision making in the win over the Wallabies.

“It’s all about the players making good decisions on the field and they did that,” he said.

“Our execution at times was good there was a couple of things we did really well.

“We were able to put set piece pressure on the Wallabies and they struggled to handle that and we’ve got another game next week so that’s all we’re worried about.”

Israel Folau proved a threat to England. Photo: ARU Media/Stu WalmsleyHe had room to put some glowing praise on Wallabies fullback Israel Folau, who was an attacking weapon in Brisbane.

“Folau’s a special player kept them in the game tonight,” he said.

“He’s a.top quality player and we’ve got to be better defensively. We were too tired at times gave him too much space on the outside.

“He’s like a big giraffe, he’s hard to tackle.”

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