High-definition France bring England struggles into focus

The final weekend of the Six Nations is a second-screen experience. However, unplug the phone and turn on the calculator because the math, as usual, could get messy.

A win for Ireland earlier in the day brings draws and bonus points into the French equation.

The points difference may yet be Ireland’s trump card.

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However, England fans will be asking different questions: calculations with less obvious answers and longer-term implications.

Would staying within a score of this posh France team be a moral victory?

Is a winning percentage of just over 50% in the last three Six Nations campaigns enough?

How many more beatings can England take before faith in head coach Eddie Jones is dented beyond repair?

Jones can hear the rumble on the horizon.

“Publish the game, you can have those kinds of discussions,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live on Thursday.

“We feel like we’re making good progress as a team. We’d rather be playing for the title, but we’re not, but we feel like the team is making good progress.”

It can only be “feeling”. The numbers are not there.

England could finish Sunday night with a second consecutive fifth-place finish for the first time in Six Nations history.

They would need to score five tries against France to match even last year’s meager total of 12.

There have been glimpses of what could be. England have hinted at their baseline brilliance and coal spirit over the past year.

when freddie steward carved on the line against Australia in the fallwe saw how the attack could work.

When the bloodthirsty mind of 14 men made up the numbers against Ireland last week, talk of a new level of team unity rang true.

But the moments are for showreels. Tournaments reveal teams. The Six Nations is an exhaustive examination that takes teams into enemy territory and dark places. And once again, England returns home among the stragglers.

Jones has his defense. He is an expert in preparing teams to peak at the Rugby World Cups.

England finished fifth in the 2018 Six Nations, the equivalent tournament in the last cycle, before reaching the final in Yokohama 18 months later.

A plan more than a year in the making came to fruition when he planned Japan’s victory over the Springboks in 2015.

He was part of the coaching staff that guided South Africa to the trophy in 2007. An unattractive Australia pushed England deep into the 2003 final in their first appearance at the tournament.

France 2023 rarely escapes Jones. Even this week, he mentioned it. England’s arrival in Paris on Tuesday was apparently to give them a taste of the host nation ahead of the 2023 tournament.

There are also extenuating circumstances. The initial plan to put Owen Farrell in the center as a stabilizing hand and second set of eyes for rookie fly half Marcus Smith was thwarted by injury.

The striking power of Manu Tuilagi, a midfield option so easy to play and so difficult to defend, was similarly lost.

But still, the doubts run deep. The suggestion is that Jones has failed in a succession plan, that the transition between two eras has been too clumsy.

With a playing pool of Premiership depth at their disposal, should only four of the 10 starting flankers during the tournament have been specialists at the position? Steward is the latest to switch after Joe Marchant, Max Malins and Tuilagi have all tried in the last 12 months.

Mark Atkinson, Ollie Lawrence and Paolo Odogwu have come to the camp offering something that the current centers do not offer. They’ve all left again without a long run on the team.

There is no clear preferred option at number eight, scrum-half or hooker.

The team selected to face France has come from left field. George Furbank is coming from the wild to start at full-back, a role he hasn’t played since October 2020. Will the apparent screeching u-turn back to a heavy-kicking strategy be for one night only? Or a more permanent reversal?

The contrast is marked.

There is no fog around France. They come at you in high definition. Relentless forward drives, rapier drives wide, tight defense and a set of proven replacements ready to slot in on the touchline.

A golden generation who won the U20 World Championship in 2018 and 2019, have generated a feel-good factor. TV ratings are up, confidence is high, the plan is clear; take the Grand Slam this year, win the World Cup next.

England’s goals are more modest. Trophies are off the menu for now. In form, matching France for most of the game, in most areas, would be a decent return.

Sacking the Stade de France, negating the odds, potentially throwing the title to Ireland, would be one of the great victories of Jones’s spell in charge. A result to sit alongside the All Blacks’ semi-final victory in 2019. An emphatic response to critics and skeptics.

Anything else and the questions only get more insistent.

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