Where Eddie Jones is going wrong

Rugby Union, bloody hell. We’ve got to talk about Eddie, but before that, what about something much cheerier? Just when it seemed the game was for the big bruisers of northern Europe and the southern hemisphere, Italy show us that it ain’t necessarily so. It seemed impossible that anyone could upstage France’s victory parade on the last day, but that is just what Italy’s heroic XV did, by upsetting the only team that had come close to bringing down Antoine Dupont and his crew of Gallic legends.

Already the best try of the tournament – and the sporting highlight of the year so far – has been set to ‘Nessun dorma’. It was a piece of sublime and utterly unexpected brilliance made more glorious by its timing (the last move of the match), its result (a one-point victory over Wales), and its architect, full-back Ange Capuozzo, a fresh-faced magician coming in at 11 stone, less than half the weight of one French prop. So thank the gods that when the kings of the rugby jungle value brute force more than skill, a young deer can skip his way through an entire herd of wildebeest.

Eddie Jones once did something similar when he crafted Japan’s uplifting 2015 World Cup victory over South Africa. But there’s been nothing like it for some time. His England team, with some extremely talented players, is consistently underperforming. So whose fault is that? If it’s all about the World Cup, as Eddie endlessly tells us, and everything else – the Six Nations, the summer tours, the autumn internationals – is part of a ‘development project’, then just charge us £10 rather than £150. It is disrespectful to the Six Nations to treat this great tournament as a training run-out.