England coach Eddie Jones conceded the accolades and acclaim his team received in the build-up to the Rugby World Cup final against the Springboks proved a distraction his team could have done without.
“A World Cup final week is different to anything else in rugby. I was about to begin my third, following 2003 and 2007, and I remembered how the pressure turned Jake White inside out when he was in charge of South Africa in Paris,” wrote Jones, who was White’s trusty adviser in the build-up and during the Boks’ successful assault on the trophy in Paris.
Earlier this month Jones found himself in the number one seat as the boss of England as they prepared for the RWC final. He admits finals “can make you do strange things”. England went into this year’s final after delivering a performance of fist-thumping authority in the semifinal against a shell-shocked New Zealand. Most pundits installed them favourites for the final, while others better schooled in the history of the RWC cautioned that teams rarely deliver back-to-back performances of that kind of quality in rugby’s showpiece event.
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