England vs France: Owen Farrell and Eddie Jones refuse to get ahead of themselves as ‘shadows’ loom large

The fear of complacency helped England overcome Ireland last weekend, but now Jones’ side are the team to beat as they welcome France back to Twickenham

For many of those who left the Aviva Stadium last weekend wearing white, the previous 100 minutes had been nothing short of perfection. A rare England win in Dublin, a bonus point to boot, and Mako Vunipola, his brother Billy and Manu Tuilagi all still in one piece.

But for those actually responsible for the 32-20 victory that puts England back among the Rugby World Cup heavyweights, there was plenty to work with.

That may not be obvious to the untrained eye, but to Eddie Jones, this week has been a chance to ground his players and remind them that the ability to get carried away with success - as may have happened with Ireland last weekend - is always sitting around the corner.

“It’s always there,” Jones said. “It’s always there. It’s with us all the time. It’s human nature so we’re always fighting complacency. Sometimes the shadows get a bit bigger and sometimes they’re smaller, but they’re always there.

“We’ve had more time together and players are starting to understand each other better, we’re starting to get greater clarity in how we want to play and how we can be the best in the world,” Jones added. “We’re going to have to be better at the breakdown than we were last week, we weren’t good enough at the breakdown so we need to be better this week.

“We’ve worked on that and got exposed a little bit in training that was a good reminder for us of how important it’s going to be against France because France contest very hard at the breakdown and we’ve got a referee (Nigel Owens) that sometimes allows a lot of contest, so we’re going to need to be at our absolute very best in that area.”

Jones’ approach this year has been to empower his players with that responsibility, giving the likes of Owen Farrell, Billy Vunipola and Ben Youngs the tools to identify what goes well and not so well and fix it during the week.

For Farrell, whose attention to detail within rugby goes beyond an obsession, this week has been about tempering the plaudits and praise that came England’s way with the balance of performance analysis - working out why Jones was so unhappy with the breakdown and the other areas that they privately identified as ones for improvement.

“No matter what, people hear (praise), family members ready it or say it, look at it on phones,” Farrell said. “The most important thing is within the four walls of our team. That has got to be the only thing that matters to us.

“We’ve got to understand what we did well and why we did it well. That’s part of being able to get better and to grow for this week. You review a game. You don’t brush over anything you did well and look at anything you could improve. You’ve got to understand why it went well and we’ve definitely done that this week.

“There’s stuff to get better at, it’s not hard to find. There always will be (plenty of flaws), and there will be stuff we did well that we know we can do better. We want to see where we can take things. We don’t want to (just) be good at stuff. Everyone is good at stuff. We want to see where we can take it. There will be a lot that we want to take to another level.”

It seem to be an England side that are moving in the right direction; a stark contrast to 12 months ago that saw the Six Nations wins over Italy and Wales prove the turning point that triggered a subsequent five-Test losing streak. On the pitch, England look to be at their most lethal in attack, their most destructive in defence and their most self-serving in leadership at a time when co-captain Dylan Hartley is not even around.

Farrell and Jones have warned England against complacency ahead of their clash with France (Reuters)

France, on the other hand, remain a misfiring mess. Never has a squad with so much potential delivered so little over a prolonged period of time, and after somehow pulling defeat from the jaws of victory against Wales last week, this almost feels like the tipping point of their own rugby crisis. Each time they look to be shifting up through the gears, they hit a box of neutrals and stall, yet in the second half against the Welsh they managed to go one better and slam straight into reverse by serving up two tries for George North on a plate.

In a time of crisis, Jacques Brunel has gone back to what he knows: put Mathieu Bastareaud in the middle and tell him to bash it up. It’s not pretty, it’s not that effective and it has not worked for quite some time now, yet coach after coach appears determined to make this style of rugby work with the French national team.

And while the first half against Wales showed the dangers that still lie within this Gallic side, Jones is not expecting too many surprises.

“I think the way the game’s gone, it’s become a lot more patterned,” he explained. “You look at the most fluid attacking sides in the world, they still play with a certain amount of pattern now and that’s been the case with French rugby, but then they get one offload and it goes back to old-style rugby. Players who looked tired suddenly have a spring in their step and there’s offloads and there’s continuity and there’s players coming from depth and it’s beautiful rugby. So it’s still there but just in a different way.”

If England can repeat the defensive effort that kept Ireland at bay though, France will have to produce something more than beautiful rugby if they’re to record a first Six Nations win at Twickenham since 2005, and unless they find out exactly what that is, England might have another week of blocking out the praise next week.