Six nations 2016: The way Eddie Jones has handled Maro Itoje so far has been absolutely perfect, Brian Smith

In Eddie’s list of virtues, the ability to wind up the opposition must rank highly

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If we all had as clear an idea as Eddie Jones on how England might line up at the next World Cup in Japan – or even how they’re likely to take the field for what promises to be a pivotal Six Nations game against Wales at Twickenham in a fortnight’s time – the betting shops would be out of business in a heartbeat. Does this worry the bookmakers? Not really. The one thing they know for sure is that we don’t know where Eddie is coming from with his long-term selection. Or, indeed, his short-term selection.

We can be certain of this much, however: Maro Itoje and Elliot Daly, the two most talked about youngsters in the English game this season, are players of considerable potential, and if they go close to fulfilling it we’ll be seeing a good deal of them in the international arena over the next decade or so. If I had to do some guesswork on the basis of what I’ve seen, I’d say that Itoje, in particular, has what it takes.

But these things are never a given and, with that in mind, I think Eddie is absolutely justified in treading carefully in this area – more carefully than many supporters have considered to be strictly necessary. It’s all very well having a gut instinct about the players you draft into a Test squad, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to mess them up.

I take my lead on this from the respected Australian rugby league coach Wayne Bennett (who, funnily enough, has just taken charge of the England 13-a-side team). His approach is to give the young blokes a go while making sure there’s a safety net underneath – to play them for a week or two, then get them out of the firing line and work like hell on any weaknesses and fragilities that may have been exposed. If you simply push people on to the high wire with nothing to break their fall and leave them to fend for themselves, you’re running a big risk.

Did we really see the best of Mathew Tait, a brilliant midfield talent, in an England shirt? Did the fuss surrounding his debut as a teenager against Wales – about which an awful lot of rubbish was spoken, both at the time and afterwards – hit his confidence for six? The answers to those questions are “probably not” and “almost certainly”. Not every outstanding player has an iron temperament. Some can be quite brittle and they need careful handling.

What we’re talking about here is the vast difference between club and Test rugby. International matches of the kind we see in the Six Nations are big events: there are 80,000 people in the ground, the buzz is huge and even those with the toughest minds can fall prey to anxiety. When I was involved with England, I saw Steffon Armitage struggle to stay on top of things during our rides to the stadium. Steffon was as gifted as anyone, but there was something in his make-up then that made it difficult for him to grab his opportunities as decisively as he would have liked.

So yes, Eddie is right to be prudent. It may well be that Itoje is one of those blokes who simply steams ahead – who responds positively whenever he is asked to make a step up – but why the rush? He’s super-special in terms of physique and technique and game understanding, but those of us on the outside don’t have a clue what’s really going on in the kid’s mind. He probably wants it all now because he’s worried that it won’t be there tomorrow, but if he’s as smart as everyone says he is, he’ll understand that patience is a virtue.

In Eddie’s list of virtues, the ability to wind up the opposition must rank almost as highly. I see he’s been talking about the fact that everyone “hates” England when it comes to international sport – he should know, being an Aussie – and while there is definitely a kernel of truth there, it’s clear to me that he’s playing games with the Irish ahead of today’s big match.

Basically, he’s trying to flush out the opposition coach, Joe Schmidt, and put him in a difficult place with his own rugby public. I’m acquainted with enough rugby followers of Irish descent down here in Sydney to know that they’re effing and blinding about the number of times their players put boot to ball over the stretch of an 80-minute game. By making not-so-veiled criticisms of Ireland’s game plan and then playing the “hatred” card, Eddie is attempting to force them into a change of mindset they’d rather not make.

There’s no doubt that opponents view contests with England as something to savour, for all the historical and cultural reasons Eddie has identified. My old friend and countryman Les Kiss, who coached Ireland’s defence at last year’s World Cup and is now in charge at Ulster, likes to say that the Irish players “grow an arm and a leg” the moment they wake up on the morning of the contest. But in reality, it’s a short-lived thing. The imperial past may give England’s opponents something to chew on in the dressing room in the build-up to kick-off, but once they’re 10 minutes into the game, all the extraneous stuff disappears. Rather than thinking about the wider context of recording a victory over the “big brother” nation, they have their hands full trying to work out whether they’re good enough to beat them, individually and collectively, in pure rugby terms.

I expect England to win today, as much because of Ireland’s lengthy injury list as anything else. Yes, the visitors will have a beaten-up Jonathan Sexton on the field, and if he performs as well as he can he’ll keep his side in contention. But England will go after him. You can hear the coaches saying: “Follow through with your tackles and make them count. If you go low on him, you won’t get nailed by the referee.” It sounds ruthless, but that’s the nature of top-level rugby.

Brian Smith played Test rugby for both Australia and Ireland and was England’s attack coach between 2008 and 2011