England coach Eddie Jones has admitted that he made an error by naming an unchanged lineup for the World Cup final against the Boks.
After England thumped the All Blacks 19-7 in the semi-finals, Jones opted to retain the same starting XV for the final against South Africa. They would go on to lose 32-12 against the Boks, the second biggest defeat in a World Cup final.
Jones has now come out and said he could have done more to rotate the squad but instead he had missed an opportunity to keep his players fresh. He did, however, refuse to elaborate on specific selections.
‘One of the areas was that I probably made a mistake in terms of selection. That’s all with the benefit of hindsight, but I should probably have refreshed the team for the final,’ Jones told The Telegraph.
‘Apart from that, it was one of those days. Sometimes they start the game brilliantly and things come off for them.
‘We start the game a little bit off, lacking a tiny bit of energy because we’d played four big games in a row. That’s the reality of it – we just came unstuck.’
Jones added that he refuses to watch a replay of the final in which his team was dismantled.
‘I haven’t watched it and I probably won’t watch it. But I know in my head where we could have probably made improvements,’ he conceded.
Photo: AP
