England may be down and out in the Beverly Hills, the beachfront hotel where the squad have stayed for virtually their entire South Africa tour, but no one eavesdropping on Eddie Jones in the lobby on Monday would have guessed it.
According to the England coach he has “never seen such an upbeat group” and his underperforming team are better placed to win the 2019 World Cup than they were a fortnight ago.
Indecision, spats and flogged players – England crumble under Eddie Jones
Given England have been beaten twice by the Springboks in eight days and slipped to sixth in the world rankings, there will be those wondering if Jones has completely mislaid his marbles. The truth is precisely the opposite: the former Australia and Japan coach has not survived this long at the top level without knowing instinctively how to divert the narrative when things go awry.
No one is more aware than Jones that England have fallen well short of their pre-tour targets but, with one Test still to play, the time has not yet quite arrived for sackcloth and ashes. Hence Jones’s insistence his squad’s World Cup outlook has brightened on this tour – “For me it is more positive” – on the basis he has given experience to players who will be better for it when they reach Japan next year.
It was a predictably canny way of deflecting the tougher debate about whether, after five consecutive Test defeats, he has taken England pretty much as far as he can. Anyone expecting Jones to congratulate the critics on their perspicacity, pack his bags and walk away from one of the highest-paid jobs in rugby was always going to be wrong-footed; few coaches in world sport are so practised in the quick-witted field of verbal self-defence.
At this precise moment England would settle for a relieving victory of any sort but Jones insists there will be no radical change in tack for the final Test in Cape Town on Saturday simply because the series has gone. The Springbok management will also be interested to hear his opinion that the only thing separating the teams has been the number of penalties – 30 compared with South Africa’s 14 – conceded by the visitors.
“The only criticism I have is that we don’t have emotional control at the right moments in games,” Jones said. “If you take the penalty try out there was nothing in the game last Saturday. All the stats show that. We are playing some great rugby. We just need more discipline and composure and to work harder off the ball. If we get those three things right this weekend, we’re going to have a superlative performance. I just hope we get the result we need to get because the players deserve it.”