Italy 9 England 40: Rome rout sees Eddie Jones’ loyalty shine through

After a tough first half, the visitors to Rome shone

Dylan Hartley talks with Eddie jones after England's win over Italy (GETTY IMAGES)

Nobody doubts the capacity of Eddie Jones to make a mark on the England side over the coming years– £500,000 worth of mark, if informed guesses on his Twickenham salary are in the ballpark – but he does not intend to do it by fast-tracking bright young things into the red-rose starting line-up for the sake of it at the expense of more familiar figures.

After watching Jonathan Joseph bag three of England’s five tries in Rome yesterday, he went out of his way to praise the incumbent outside centre from Bath and put a few miles of distance between himself and the theory that Elliot Daly, the uncapped Wasps midfielder, is closing in on the No 13 shirt.

Asked whether Joseph had gone a long way – perhaps the whole of the way – towards silencing talk about Daly and his immediate international prospects, the head coach was at his most pointed. “There’s been lots of talk from you guys, but there hasn’t been lots of talk from me,” he responded. “Let’s get this right. I never talked about Elliot being a Test 13. What I have said is that he’s a very good player with potential. Joseph wasn’t under pressure for his place out there. It’s you people who think he’s under pressure, not me.”

If truth be told, Joseph probably needed a strong performance, even though Jones felt his defensive work against Scotland in the opening round had been “outstanding”. Injury problems and a flat period of form with a struggling club at Premiership and European levels had left the former London Irish midfielder in an uncomfortable place. This will have done him the world of good.

“Joseph has a great short kicking game, a good outside break and lovely footwork,” Jones said. “We saw a bit of that in this match. A No 13 is like a No 8, in that he has to read the game, and he read it well out there. That Italian centre he was up against [Michele Campagnaro] is a serious player, so I’m pleased he was able to show something in attack as well as stay sound in defence.”

If the Azzurri hierarchy was less than joyous at the failure of the referee, Glen Jackson, to give the England flanker James Haskell a 10-minute break in the sin bin for an aerial hit on the full-back Luke McLean – there were also mutterings about some red-rose skulduggery in the build-up to one of the tries – Jones was concerned about a below-par return from the line-out and his side’s unexpected and unsought success in playing Italy into the game in the first half.

He was, however, entirely sanguine about another heavy penalty count against his side: 13 here, one more than they had compiled in Edinburgh eight days previously. “If you look at most of the teams that win tournaments around the world, they’re usually the most heavily penalised,” the coach argued. “Giving away penalties is not an indication of lack of discipline. It’s about knowing when to give them away.

“Rugby is played on a knife-edge: it’s about one second here, three centimetres there. I’m not concerned about the number of penalties we’re conceding, more about the times when we give them away.”

For the second match running, England appeared to emerge with a clean slate on the injury front. Italy? They were anything but unscathed. Alessandro Zanni and Marco Fuser suffered concussion, while Gonzalo Garcia limped off with a knee issue. The most serious problem concerned the hooker Ornel Gega, who required treatment for a suspected fractured cheekbone.