Jones fires back at Cheika
The 13 consecutive wins since Jones took charge of England have lifted them to second in the world rankings, behind the All Blacks, who were robbed of their own ideal year by Ireland’s stunning win in Chicago last month.
The hostility has provided the backdrop to England’s attempt to register their first unblemished year since 1992 and Jones insists his team is ready to secure a fourth successive victory over Australia.
“If they do want to get back to us, I don’t know”.
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. But we are hell-bent on achieving that. We haven’t got that tipping point yet but we’re moving towards it.
“We’ve still got a hell of a lot of work to do to become the best team in the world”.
“If we win this Test then we create history, so we’re aiming to create history”. “We will play them when we get the opportunity and if that is 2018, we will play them in 2018”. “1020 days, there you go”.
“Australia came out hard and we knew they were going to do that”, said Jones. We can’t get too ahead of ourselves.
Jones has been on the front foot this week, with England going for a record 14th win in a row since the former Wallabies mentor took over previous year. We don’t have that yet. “We’ve played the top two teams seven times this year with a whole bunch of new debutants and new faces around and that’s been going good, even if the results haven’t been”.
Not content with England’s ideal 2016, head coach Eddie Jones has set his sights on successfully defending the country’s Six Nations crown.
Ella helped out his former Randwick teammate Jones as skills coach when England thumped Australia 3-0 in a Test series in Australia in the mid-year worldwide window. “I don’t think that’s amusing I think that’s poor form myself”, he said.
Australia’s next scheduled fixture is not until next June when they take on Fiji in Melbourne.
How the English were only three points behind was as staggering as how easily Australia were cutting them to shreds before a full house at Twickenham on Saturday.
“I think we were disappointed with how we started but the resilience we showed to bounce back. twenty minutes in, we bounced back in the set piece in the first half, and we played flat, on the line”. “You’ve just got to keep doing the right things, keep doing the right processes and eventually it will come together”.
“And the third Test, we had no right to win and we won that, so they’re pretty good efforts”.
“Everyone is playing hard off the field and on the field”.
“We’ve made decisions around this season as opposed to starting next season when the calendar isn’t perhaps as packed”, said Cheika.
In the process they would extend their winning run against Australia – the team that dumped them out of last autumn’s World Cup – to four matches and end the year as the second-placed team in the global rankings. “I was impressed with what he did”.