Jones Makes One Change

Eddie Jones has made just one change to his successful England side, as they brace themselves to feel the full force of Scottish Rugby in the Calcutta Cup.

With England having won their first two matches, beating Italy 46-15 and then following it up with a hard-fought and narrow victory over Wales, the Scottish are the biggest obstacle in the way of another Six Nations Grand Slam.

With Scotland already having defeated France, should England win, it will put them in a superlative position to take the Six Nations crown – Grand Slam or not – though it may come down to an all-or-nothing match against the Irish on St Patrick’s day, and the game against France (with some tickets still available through this link) remains the most in-demand match of the series – even though France have already been defeated twice!?

England head coach Eddie Jones has made just one change to the starting line up, with Nathan Hughes returning to the first ream in the No 8 position – making his return from a knee injury that he picked up for Wasps back in October. The Scottish are expected to bulk out their pack, with their scrum weight set to go up by as much as 10% as they look to take on the English at their own game!

Jones puts a lot of the success down to the back-room staff at England, with the Sports Scientists name-checked for their ability to harness the player’s data, so they can find areas to improve. “We follow everything the players do closely. We watch all the videos. Are they stretching properly? We watch what they do in the gym. The only place we don’t have cameras is in their rooms. We might get into trouble if we did that. After that, it comes down to the guys to do something with the data – and so far it has worked.”

The match against Scotland kicks off at 14:45 on Saturday, and should see captain Dylan Hartley become England’s second most capped player of all time, surpassing Jonny Wilkinson on 91 caps and sitting behind just Jason Leonard (114) in the all-time roster.