England brushes aside Fiji for 11th straight win

Fiji-born England winger Semesa Rokoduguni scored a brace as Eddie Jones’ team buried an overpowered Fiji under an avalanche of tries to record their biggest win over the Pacific Islanders in a one-sided 58-15 contest at Twickenham on Saturday. We’ll have to see. “We’re only 11 games into what we’ve started here”.

“They move the ball a lot and at times we got caught by Fiji so they will be looking at that and thinking they can exploit us”.

Yes, it gives the coaches a chance to look at the players waiting in the wings, but if you’re picking a second string team in the first place then you’re telling those individuals this match is of less significance than the other fixtures in the Autumn Internationals programme.

“I thought there was some good stuff, attack-wise”, Ford said.

Nine tries were amassed in the second autumn global, with Jonathan Joseph, Semesa Rokoduguni and Joe Launchbury crossing the try line twice and with less than half an hour on the clock England had surged 34-0 ahead. “We have great competition across the board”.

“If we want greatness in our team we have to maintain that intensity after racing into an early lead”, Jones said. “There is potential for real greatness in our team”.

Harrison was taken off just 31 minutes into the third Test against Australia in Sydney, a match England won to complete a 3-0 series win over the Wallabies, with Jones citing a lack of physicality.

England were reportedly unhappy previous year when France did not announce their side for a World Cup warm-up match at Twickenham until the day before the game.

John McKee, a New Zealander who has been around the coaching block, is now charged with fielding the queries and most are met with a shrug of the ‘there-is-nothing-we-can-do-about-it variety’.

“We came out with the win and I’m grateful for that. It will come next week against Argentina”. Fiji will have a team in Australia’s National Rugby Championship next year, Olympic gold mania has already struck Suva, a Super Rugby outfit is being talked about and who knows the governing bodies might lob them a bit more cash.

“But now they have some excellent runners with the ball and can play the unstructured stuff just as well”.

“They can help us and the Lions. There is no etiquette”, Jones said.

In total there are five changes, one positional, to the side that toppled South Africa 37-21 at Twickenham last Saturday, with Harrison’s promotion the only adjustment to the pack.

If this was the week of a World Cup final it would probably qualify as a crisis and England will have less wriggle room from January when it will become mandatory for sides to be announced 48 hours in advance, unless the two unions involved have agreed otherwise in advance.