England Leave Jones Sucking Lemons With 13-Try Rout of Japan
England scored 13 tries against Japan at Twickenham after the visitors had a man sent off before touching the ball. The lopsided result has revived questions about the gap between rugby's established nations and the rest, as ten unions pool commercial rights.
England ran in 13 tries against Japan at Twickenham after the visitors had a man sent off before they had touched the ball, a one-sided result that has sharpened debate over the widening gap in international rugby. England leave Jones sucking lemons, in the words of the day's coverage, as the camera kept returning to Eddie Jones in the coaches' box.
His face looked a little more forlorn after each score.
Max Ojomoh looked the part when given the freedom of Twickenham. Will Joseph finished chances, and Maro Itoje, in one writer's phrase, can remove candy from the clutches of a baby. The match was effectively over inside a minute.
England under Steve Borthwick have a habit of this. They did something similar to an off-colour Australia last week and dispatched Fiji over the summer. Borthwick's side stay in their structures, stick to the script and keep the foot on the throat.
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) had little to complain about. It came close to a sell-out for a foregone conclusion and sold 9,864 under-16s tickets, thought to be a record for juniors at a men's Test at Twickenham. Henry Pollock is part of that draw, though he was far quieter than last week.
RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney has outlined plans to find the next generation of Pollocks. Details were thin.
The scoreline points to a bigger problem. Japan have regressed since beating South Africa at the 2015 World Cup and reaching the quarter-finals four years later. Domestic rugby in Japan has its own troubles, but established nations are not doing enough to help.
Sweeney also set out how ten of the 12 nations in the competition, the Six Nations and the Sanzaar unions, are pooling their commercial rights. Japan and Fiji, invited guests, are left outside. The USA is expected to be called up to replace one of them if it gets its house in order.
Promotion and relegation is supposed to be part of the competition, but the ten unions' new collaboration makes that hard to imagine in practice. The established unions will grow richer while emerging nations meet more barriers. Samoa, losing talent to rugby league, show the risk.
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