If England don’t sort themselves out this week they will be on the end of a hiding from Ireland on Saturday. Ireland have been head and shoulders above the other five nations in this campaign. Their clarity of thought and accuracy in deed is in stark contrast to what we saw from England in Paris. If there is a good time in a World Cup cycle to go through the test of character that Eddie Jones’s squad face then it may be now — the England team I played in were also beaten at the Stade de France just over a year and a half before we won the World Cup. The problem is that the 2002 French team weren’t bad.

Source: The Times March 11, 2018 00:00 UTC