Spare a thought for Eddie Jones.
No?
The England coach made Jacob Stockdale a record breaker. Try number seven was down to Jones insisting on the in-goal area being extended and the Ulster winger just finger-tipped the ball down before it trickled over the blue line (painted a new hue due to the snow that fizzled about all day).
“That’s correct. We wanted to play with bigger dead ball areas, which we are quite allowed to under the laws. Everyone was aware of it.”
Backfired a little bit?
“Not really. Just part of the game.”
Spare a thought for this Australian because he will probably come back to haunt Ireland. He did mastermind the Wallabies and Springboks to successive World Cup finals. Don't forget the small matter of Japan beating South Africa in 2015. And there has been a double Six Nations winning English revival which was only very recently derailed by Scotland, France and now Ireland sacking Twickenham.
“Every team has these runs. I’ve coach long enough to know this. Sometimes you get out of them quick and sometimes it takes a bit longer. It’s gone three games, it’s not nice, but it’s part of the process of becoming a better team.
“When you take over a team, like I did with England, it is quite easy to improve them quickly because there is certain things you can go to and fix that quickly.
“There are other internal mechanisms that take longer to fix. They are slow burners. If you don’t fix them they catch up to you when you get to the big tournament, the World Cup.
"We just weren't good enough. Ireland were just too good. We gave them penalties that were avoidable which has been a trait for us during the Six Nations. "
This English team - from Owen Farrell to Joe Marler - were guilty of late tackes (like Farrell on Rob Kearney) or blatant off the ball hits (like Marler on Joey Carbery) that combined to help England beat themselves.
“We allowed them skip away too far and we were chasing our tail the whole game.”
Jones needs more men like Owen Farrell. This he knows better than anyone. He refused to blame the Lions tour - Maro Itoje did show glimpses of his 2017 magnificence - or losing Billy Vunipola or Premiership clubs flogging his players, because these would be excuses.
“We weren’t happy being the team we were,” said Jones when reasons for the collapse were sought. “We knew even though we won 23 out of 25 games that we weren’t good enough to get what we wanted to get.
“Sometimes that hurts and that’s what we are going through. In terms of what we want to do as a team I think we are moving forward - I know that’s hard to see.”
The problem for England captain Dylan Hartley is he turns around and doess not see leaders of the calibre of Johnny Sexton, Peter O'Mahony, Rob Kearney and CJ Stander.
Rory Best has these men and future captains like Dan Leavy and James Ryan.
“We have spoken about leadership density on the field. That is a slow burner. You got to keep building that.”
Ask enough of the correct questions and, eventually, the truth is revealed.
“We are playing without our five top backrowers at the moment. Lost a number of other players. Some guys have come in and done really well. Others are probably going to struggle to participate in the future.”
Later, James Haskell walked into the mixed zone.
How’s your television career coming along?
“It’s about to start sooner than I expected after that,” smiled the veteran backrower, recalled after a list of injuries.
Jones added: “We have to get a greater depth in our squad, and a depth of players who can play test rugby.”
What’s the heat like in this job compared to previous incarnations?
“Well, in Japan I couldn’t read the press so that was a massive advantage. My wife never read it to me, but I’m sure they would have written all those things when we lost four games on the hop before the [2015]World Cup.
“We want to be where we want to be by the World Cup, and we want to win tests.”
