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By Tom Fordyce
Chief sports writer
It matters how you begin a World Cup although maybe not as much as you finish it.
Eddie Jones has been profound in enough of these ding-dongs to realise , along with his grin after the stuttering 35-3 win over Tonga on Sunday of England was of a guy who understands he has opportunity and time to find more.
He will have to search for it following a performance that has been less of a charge on into the World Cup stage compared to a slightly apologetic stumble through the curtain.
You can win matches against teams like Tonga and still feel as if you’ve lost just a little. Everyone expects success. Anticipate something extravagant when the resistance have dropped six of their last seven matches, including beats by Japan, Fiji and Samoa.
It does not have to matter. Only win. Get the bonus point in the bag. Keep everybody fit, proceed, step up it.
And yet…
Two weeks back Tonga were sending 14 tries against New Zealand. The screen of the reigning champions at setting the much stiffer challenge of South Africa at Yokohama cast a shadow to their throne, while the contrast between championship proper and a warm-up game isn’t completely true.
Neither was the Jones grin a permanent fixture on his laps. After England had given away a needless penalty for offside following a restart when Maro Itoje and Billy Vunipola attempted something unnecessarily funky, the huge screens in the corner of the Sapporo Dome showed a close-up of this Australian two thumping the table in front of him with mute fury.
When it was reminiscent of the moment when among his inaugural, Martin Johnson, was caught almost hitting a pit in his leg after a Danny Care transgression at Dublin a decade before, it illustrated too that the facial Jones shows to his players behind closed doors may not always be benevolent.
A World Cup effort that fell apart immediately that period a win over Argentina finished johnson’s own reign as England coach.
Jones understands that, like Johnson, his period at the helm will be judged by what happens on the biggest point of all. You can acquire the Six Nations and you can lose them. Fail in you and a World Cup go – as Stuart Lancaster did following the calamity of 2015, since Johnson did in the Wake of both 2011.
Johnson’s regime finished with all the Manu Tuilagi jumping off a ferry to Auckland harbour, the final of moments of scandal. Lancaster’s was arguably fatally holed if a composite of off-field indiscipline and recognizable injury denied him the opportunity to bring Tuilagi back into the fold, with all that happened afterwards with Sam Burgess coming from his place and a settled rear being reshuffled to accommodate him.
And so Jones can count himself fortunate that he has Tuilagi not just back but looking both thinner and stronger than he has in also the energy of a wrecking-ball, a bulldozer using all the acceleration of a sports car and also an England jersey.
The muscle was brought by tonga and also they brought the mindset, just as everybody expected. Anthony Watson and ben Youngs were stopped as though they had run into concrete bollards. The open-side flanker Zane Kapeli of Tonga, reversed at startling rate vunipola, who goes backwards as frequently as Johnson did as a participant.
Tuilagi shows obvious relish for such heavy fire. He also gets the weaponry.
His very first attempt came with a thump, the spin and two thumps of a wrestler. His second came after the Tongan defence was squeezed into his run and ended with a line into the space left behind.
World Cups are won by groups but garlanded by excellent players hitting their peak. Moments and big screens decide the matches although It’s possible to cruise through a number of the group stage.
Tuilagi has ever had the capacity to become a player like that and England will need him to become. In a group based around power and its application he is a point of difference using the bluntest of corners, its smiling embodiment.
He might have had a hat-trick had replacement Henry Slade taken the ball and maybe not shown a little rustiness deep together along with his team-mate cantering in the Tongan 22 on his left . Slade and Elliot Daly had exactly the same problem with ruthlessness when a second opportunity opened up into the left corner, among 14 handling mistakes made by the guys.
Jones was eager to point out after that England have now played 160 moments of Evaluation rugby without conceding a try, less to underline that those games were against groups who few expect to escape the group point here in Japan was pushed to one side.
England have time with the equally spirited restricted USA to come at Kobe. You get the feeling the Jones, a famously hard taskmaster, will enjoy the.
“Occasionally softball’s similar to that,” he explained after. “You proceed with all the best intentions to be eloquent, you’ve got a picture in mind that says you are likely to play some rugby and it does not end up like this.
“We were not sharp today, but what I really liked was the mindset of our players. The excellent thing was we showed no frustration.”
In public. England’s journey is still underway. It requires to pick up management and pace.
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