Jones sets new England targets

THE celebratory ticker-tape barely had time to hit the ground after England secured a 2-0 series win in Argentina before Eddie Jones set a new challenge for his team. His conclusion after scoring 73 points away from home in two matches against a team who graced the World Cup semifinal in 2015? That this was nowhere near good enough. Jones talks about the phases building towards his ultimate goal – lifting the Webb Ellis Cup in 2019. Phase one was his first season, where England won nine on the spin. Phase two has just ended – 10 more Test wins, one loss. Now phase three begins, which he says runs from now until his World Cup training camp in June 2019 before phase four, the final push. And Jones has set a challenge for the next 23 months, for England to become the invincibles. After beating England’s World Cup pool opponents in 2019, the head coach said: ‘To beat Argentina at the World Cup we are going to have to improve. ‘The next phase we want to go through undefeated – that is the next challenge.’ It was another cracking game in this series. George Ford scored 15 points after 23 last week. The exclamation point came with six minutes to spare, a cooly slotted drop goal from 40m out. The tries came from Ewels, Piers Francis after a run from Mike Brown, Danny Care and Will Collier from a maul. Argentina couldn’t keep up but still managed good tries, with Nicolas Sanchez adding points from the tee.