Eddie Jones hails “gritty” England performance to overcome Wales

With two victories in the bag against European rugby behemoths France and Wales respectively, England can certainly be pleased with their opening to the 2017 Six Nations. In the first half they had nearly a flawless attack and kept the possession for long periods of time and it was hard get the ball off them.

“The roof should be open unless the conditions are going to be absolutely bad, that’s how rugby should be played because it’s a winter sport”.

Wales duly switched to attack mode and were in control for the rest of the half, though they could and should have turned round with more than their 13-8 lead after captain Alun Wyn Jones turned down two kickable penalties and lost possession on both occasions. We need to start putting games to bed earlier but we will take the win and look ahead to the Italy game now. You just love being in the cauldron of the Principality Stadium against a team like England. “That’s what’s exciting about hopefully what’s to come; it’s not the finished article, and hopefully we’ll keep getting better and better”. “They’ll have a role to play on our game”.

“We played some great rugby at times, but it was basic errors that crept in for those last 10 minutes”.

“In the concept of the week and how big a game this was, you want your best players playing these games, and George wanted to be given that opportunity”.

Some Twitter users disagreed with the decision to drop the video, saying they found it amusing.

“He has got a good record against Wales“.

Moriarty’s enormous tackles on both Maro Itoje and Farrell produced deafening roars from the home crowd in Cardiff. His rise has been meteoric when you look at last year and the way he has maintained his form this year. But he hooked his next kick wide after scrum-half Rhys Webb was off-side. It is a very positive environment to be in. But we are not going to get too carried away. We watched the England game (against France) live.

“Not much was going through…” We are going to concentrate on ourselves – that’s where the main focus is.

“I think it speaks volumes of our back-row”, Howley said.

For some it is a boiling backdrop of noise adorned with music and ground announcements stoked with lashings of food and liquid while they flit between the action, observations and the charms of the giant replay screens.

England should win that game easily based on Italy’s poor display against Ireland on Saturday, and with a home match against Scotland before the Super Saturday finale in Dublin, they have been made odds-on to secure back to back grand slams.

Just as then, it was the bench that proved decisive, centre Ben Te’o – the matchwinner last week – coming on to rip holes in Wales and set up the dramatic finale.