England working hard to address frailties exposed by Scotland loss

Eddie Jones has admitted his side needs to address the shortcomings exposed by Scotland. Picture: Getty Images

Scotland dominated the breakdown and exploited a frailty in defence to complete a 25-13 victory that leaves England’s NatWest 6 Nations title defence on precarious ground with two rounds remaining.

Jones admits it took too long to adjust to the landscape of the match - by half-time they had been over-run 22-6 - but views the setback as a necessary part of the team’s learning curve.

“We’ve done an exhaustive investigation into finding out what wasn’t right and there are some things that we’ve found we could have done better,” Jones said.

“We’ve been coming up with solutions to those over the last couple of days. We had a really good meeting on Tuesday.

“Learning to fix it on the hop is the next step. It’s very easy to talk about leadership and how to change things, but it’s harder to do.

“After 20 minutes it would have been ideal if we’d have reacted quicker, but we didn’t and it took us until half-time.

“But that’s the progression of the team and unless you have these sort of lessons you don’t learn from them and we’ve learnt a lot.

“It’s a harsh lesson and a lesson we don’t want to have again but the likelihood is we could well have it.

“It took New Zealand eight years to learn how to fix things on the field. We’re trying to do it in four, so everything’s a bit more difficult for us.

“The only way to accelerate the process is not to sleep. That’s the only way. It’s not easy. We’re working round the clock to fix it. And we’ll get there but we’re going to have these sorts of situations.”

The loss in Edinburgh was only the second blemish of Eddie Jones’ reign and the head coach has called for perspective ahead of the clash with France in Paris on Saturday week.

“There’s no lack of attitude in our side,” the Australian said. “I’ve seen various commentaries about various things about the team, but any team that wins 23 in 25 games has got a bit of steel about them.

“Yes, we were caught short on Saturday, but they have plenty of steel about them, so I don’t need to worry about the steel or the character of these players.

“We’re all gutted as we put a lot into the preparation. We thought we’d prepared well and we played poorly. I give full credit to Scotland.”

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