Eddie Jones characterises England win over Australia as ‘we didn’t play well’

'We made history today but it's not good enough' said Eddie Jones on Saturday, as England's 39-28 win - their most points ever against Australia - did not apparently impress.

England coach Eddie Jones walks onto the pitch prior to the International Test against Australia on Saturday in Brisbane. Gameron Spencer / Getty Images / June 11, 2016

If anyone thought that beating a southern hemisphere power in their own backyard and securing only a fourth win over the Wallabies in Australia was going to satisfy England coach Eddie Jones, they were not under that illusion for long.

Saturday’s points tally was their highest in any match against the Wallabies but Jones has not dragged England out of the dark places of last year’s World Cup exit by getting easily carried away.

“We didn’t play well tonight, we’re happy with the result but we didn’t play well,” the Australian, who now has seven wins out of seven as England coach, told reporters after the 39-28 victory at Lang Park.

“We gave the Wallabies some easy tries and we’ll need to work on our defence. We made history today but it’s not good enough for us. It’s all about next week.”

Next week is the second Test in the three-match series in Melbourne and Jones said there would have to be improvement if England were to remain on course for a first series win in Australia.

“It took us a while to find the pace of the game but when we did, I thought of our next 60 minutes we played 45 minutes of good rugby,” he added.

“We can improve significantly in our ball carrying and our second man work, we can improve significantly in terms of our defence spacing and we can still put more pressure on Australia at the set piece.”

What Jones was happy with was the performance of flanker James Haskell in his back-row battle against Australia’s David Pocock.

“I think he was outstanding, physically good, you know Pocock’s a special player but I think Haskell did some special things that gave us momentum,” he said.

He was also happy with the way flyhalf George Ford, dropped for the first time under Jones for this Test, changed the game in tandem with Owen Farrell when he came on for inside centre Luther Burrell in an early tactical substitution.

“We just needed to change the game, at times you just do things through gut feeling to change the game,” Jones said.

“It just gave us a bit more variety to our game ... we just needed to get the control back in the game that we didn’t have in the first 29 minutes.”

If anyone was wondering whether Jones was about to embrace the role as favourites for England ahead of the Melbourne Test, he nipped that idea in the bud too.

“There’s a lot of expectation about the Wallaby team, they’ve come back from the World Cup as the second best team in the world,” he said.

“They’ve got the best coach in the world, the pressure’s on them next week.”

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