They now come across like a cover band of the 2019 team, everyone else moved on
If Jones has proved anything in his career it is that he knows how to steer a team through to the tournament. It is perhaps the only thing you could say about him that will not start an argument in the clubhouse.
The other, more pertinent, reason for keeping Jones was that for once the RFU had a sensible succession plan. It was an open secret they wanted Steve Borthwick, who knew Jones, and the players, from his spell as England’s forwards coach. He had won a title with Leicester Tigers, but still needed a little more time to develop as a head coach, get his support team in place and work on his ideas about what direction he wanted to take the team heading to the next World Cup cycle.
The whole point of a succession plan is that you are in control of the present and the future. The RFU has managed to organise its plan so that it has compromised both. Borthwick is a good man, and thorough, but watching his team hobble through these warm-ups it is hard not to have flashbacks to his days as England’s captain, which were characterised by a very earnest and effortful hangdog ineffectiveness.
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