England win 2016 Six Nations: Maro Itoje puts the ‘wow’ factor in Eddie Jones’ new-fangled Grand Slam chasers

There is something undeniably fresh and new-fangled about the red-rose game right now

Maro Itoje produced a spellbinding performance against Wales (Getty)

International union has never been a one-man show – even when Jonah Lomu was roaming God’s rugby earth like a silver-ferned carnotaurus, there were 14 representatives of a lesser species in the immediate vicinity, working out ways of giving him the ball – but it said something for the quality of Maro Itoje’s all-encompassing display on Triple Crown day that Eddie Jones, the man responsible for fast-tracking the youngster into the England pack, was left suffering from a mild bout of amnesia.

An hour or so after watching his side’s 25-21 victory over Wales – the biggest four-point hiding in the history of Six Nations rugby if we judge the game on the first 67 minutes rather than the last 13 – the boss could be heard telling everyone within earshot that he could not remember working with a lock forward as blessed, physically and athletically, as the Londoner.

Which was quite a confession, coming from an Australian who had coached the great Wallaby captain John Eales – to many right-thinking people the finest second-rower of the modern era, by a distance.

“Ah yes… Eales was pretty good,” Jones acknowledged, after a pause for reflection, before adding, by way of a retaliatory strike: “But then, I didn’t do much with him until the end of his career, when he couldn’t jump.” The important thing, he seemed to be saying, was that the prospect of helping a 21-year-old of Itoje’s class maximise his potential was far more thrilling than managing the decline of a 30-something titan who had been there and done it all twice over.

“As long as Maro stays hungry and doesn’t get too far ahead of himself, he’ll be a wonderful player,” Jones continued, and you could see his point. Itoje’s skills as a vertically-propelled pilferer hurt Wales so badly at the line-out that Test Lions as influential as Jamie Roberts, Sam Warburton and Taulupe Faletau were rendered anonymous for large swathes of a one-sided opening hour. Throw in the role he played in Anthony Watson’s first-half try, his turnover skills on the deck and his ability to surround the visitors all on his own while double-tackling them single-handedly, and the word “wow” becomes unavoidable.

The fact that Itoje is a top-grade student as well as a rare rugby talent is of little interest to Jones – “just because you’re academically smart, it doesn’t mean you’re street smart, which is what you need to be to survive in Test rugby,” the coach said – but the newcomer’s powers of self-criticism will surely serve him well.

There was not even the hint of a word out of place following a man-of-the-match performance every bit as overwhelming as those delivered by the No 8 Billy Vunipola, his Saracens clubmate, in the victories over Scotland and Ireland.

“What’s the danger of getting ahead of myself? There is no danger,” he said. “If this is the best rugby I ever play in my career I’ll be pretty disappointed, because I know I’m nowhere near where I think I can be. And as a team, we haven’t achieved any of our goals. When we do that we can start celebrating.”

Together with his engine-room partner George Kruis, another tight forward hitting his levels to the coach’s satisfaction, Itoje even managed to see off Alun Wyn Jones, one of the two or three outstanding locks in Europe for the best part of a decade and the pre-eminent one right now, although the Welsh decision to withdraw the Swansea man just past the hour seemed more than a little random.

It was hardly his fault that the Red Dragon back row went missing in action; that the decision-making at half-back left so much to be desired; that the tactical kicking game failed to stack up.

The first half, which England won 16-zip on the back of Watson’s finish and a well-nigh perfect display of marksmanship from Owen Farrell, brought back memories of the early 1990s and 2000s, when these Twickenham games bordered on the processional.

Maybe it was this thought – the realisation that a Golden Age team was going the way of sides from the Dark Ages – that convinced the visitors of the need to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. With Rhys Webb providing a point of difference on his comeback off the bench at scrum-half and Rhys Priestland bringing an air of subtle menace to the midfield passing game, the likes of Jonathan Davies and George North suddenly looked like world-beaters.

Two tries were scored in three breathless minutes and but for Manu Tuilagi’s strong-armed hit on North at the death, Wales would have bagged a third and nicked it. This danger, so real and present at the last knockings, unnerved Eddie Jones just a little.

“If we’d won 25-7, as we might have done had our mindset been to keep doing what we’d been doing, it would have been a fantastic result,” he said. “People would have been performing cartwheels down the street. So I don’t want us to play as we did in the last 20 minutes. I want us to be a ‘go at ’em’ team, not a strangulation team.”

Rugby being a game of subjugation as well as inspiration, players generally find it easier to go after their opponents once they’ve choked the life out of them. Given the choice, Jones would rather not waste time on so conservative a process. He wants his players to be fit enough and bright enough to play the game at pace from minute one – to ask hard questions from the kick-off while denying their rivals the time and space to find the answers.

England have a long way to travel in this regard and it may be that even if they complete a first Grand Slam in 13 years by winning in Paris on Saturday night, the three-Test series against the Wallabies in June will come too soon.

But there is something undeniably fresh and new-fangled about the red-rose game right now, epitomised by a fresh, new-fangled lock with the capacity to change the way the second-row role is performed.