Rugby: All Blacks there for the taking, says England coach Eddie Jones

Eddie Jones. Photo / Photosport

England coach Eddie Jones has got in an early dig at the All Blacks ahead of this Sunday’s test at Twickenham.

It will be the first meeting between the two sides since England’s 2019 Rugby World Cup semifinal win over the All Blacks.

“We showed that if you’ve got the right attitude and the right game plan then history can be broken,” Jones said of the 19-7 win at Yokohama.

“If we go after them then they’re there for the taking — and we’re going to go after them.”

Jones, whose personal record against the All Blacks is six wins from 14 matches, insisted that beating New Zealand again is “not mission impossible”.

“It’s an opportunity to play against one of the giants of world rugby. For an England player it’s a massive opportunity,” said Jones.

“If you look at the history of the sport, the game’s been going for 150 years and England have won 19 per cent of their tests against New Zealand.

“We’re looking forward to the opportunity to break history again.

“They’re playing a slightly different style of game to what they used to but guys who played in that game [the 2019 semifinal] — Owen Farrell, Mako Vunipola, Billy Vunipola, Maro Itoje, Jamie George — are going to be important in reinforcing to the players that it’s not mission impossible.”

England bounced back from their shock defeat to Argentina last week with a dominant 52-13 victory over Japan on Sunday, with Jones’ side running in seven tries.

“It’s an improvement. As we said at the start of November, each game we want to get a little bit better and we were definitely better than the Argentina game,” Jones said.

“I thought we played with a lot of purpose and we knew exactly how we wanted to play.

“As I said in the round-up after Argentina, the fault that we didn’t play like that against Argentina was my poor coaching, so this week it is not my poor coaching. It’s a good play from the players.”