Ever-changing England still have Six Nations fate in their own hands | Robert Kitson


Eddie Jones’s side are a perpetual work in progress but remain in title contention with two games left – at least on paper

It used to be painting the Forth Bridge which was considered the ultimate in never-ending jobs. These days it is the England rugby team, a work in progress for so long that people have almost forgotten what the original timescale was meant to be. There are some weekends, and this was another of them, when it also feels as if Tracey Emin’s unmade bed might be the secret artistic inspiration for Eddie Jones’s still-ongoing project.

Nothing is ever finished with Jones, regardless of the evidence available. “It’s got no ceiling,” he insisted on Saturday night on the subject of England’s supposedly limitless attacking potential. Maybe so but it takes a coach of supreme self-belief to talk in such terms when his side has just been outscored at home by three tries to one by a Welsh team who, by their own admission, really started to play only after half-time.

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