THIS WEEK STARTED with Eddie Jones underlining Ireland’s position as favourites for their clash with his England team on Saturday and he has now upgraded that status to “red-hot favourites.”
The England boss enjoys pushing opposition teams forward as being the more fancied side and this week has been no different.
While Ireland are the actual narrow favourites, Jones claims he has been seeing and hearing strong predictions of Irish success this weekend.
“What I do know is they’re red-hot favourites,” said Jones this afternoon when asked about Andy Farrell’s team.
“I went to the coffee shop yesterday and the girl says, ‘That Irish team must be good, all their ex-players think they’re going to win the game and all the ex-England players think they’re going to win the game. They must be a pretty good team. How are you feeling?’
“I said, ‘Just give me the coffee please.’”
Jones declined to say whether he personally agreed with Ireland’s status as favourites for the clash in Twickenham.
“I’m not a bookmaker, mate, I’m a coach,” said Jones.
“All I’m worried about is my team playing well. We’re prepared and we’re going to go after them, mate.”
The England head coach repeated his point that the Irish players’ understanding of each other is a key strength for them.
Farrell’s starting XV for this weekend includes 11 Leinster players, with another two on the bench, and Jones sees this as an advantage ahead of a game that he billed as being a Six Nations semi-final.
“They’re a very cohesive team,” said Jones. “80% of the team train for 11 months of the year. They’re a highly organised national union that gets the players in the best condition so we’ve got to break their cohesion.
“Once we break their cohesion, we’ll have opportunities to attack and we’ve then got to be good enough to take them.
“It’s a semi-final, mate. One of the two teams progresses to the final which is the last game. Both teams know what’s at stake, but if you read the papers there is only one team that has a chance of winning it.
“When you’re playing against a team that has to basically jump out of the barrier and win then you’ve got to make sure your horse is ready to go. All I’ve been doing is trying to get my horse ready to go.”
Across the Irish Sea, Ireland head coach Farrell spoke soon before Jones’ latest media conference.
Asked about Jones’ earlier point that Ireland are the favourites, Farrell said those kinds of comments have no impact on him.
“It doesn’t bother me whatsoever, I don’t see what it does for and against,” said Farrell. “It’s just about us preparing properly.
“I also know that Eddie has said plenty of times in the past as well that praise makes you weak. We make sure we take care of our house and prepare over the coming days, get ready to perform.”
Indeed, Farrell was keen to underline that Ireland must make life difficult for the English players, who will have a big home crowd roaring them on at Twickenham.
Jones’ men narrowly lost their opening Six Nations game against Scotland but have beaten Italy and Wales since.
“We’ve got to make sure that they’ve got a bump in the road,” said Farrell.
“You say that they’re building through the competition but we’ve got to put a stop to that, haven’t we?
“That’s our intention, to go over there and prove to ourselves that there’s a performance in there from us that’s a step above what we’ve shown already.”
The difference in being placed in pot 2 to pot 3 is huge.
Obliviously one is called pot two the other pot three.cant get anymore different than that
*Obviously
Damn auto correct!!
Main point being that nearly all the teams in pot 3 are better than us. How the hell did we rank above them?
@Fin Tastic. These qualifiers are based on previous Euro qualifying campaigns. Generally we have a better record than the teams in pot 3 for the Euros. Qualifying for 2012 has made the biggest difference here.
How Ireland are a pot 2 team is beyond me.most of the Pot 3 teams are far better than ireland.
It’s 40% based on the 2014 World Cup qualifiers, 40% based on the entire euro 2012 campaign (including the finals) and 20% based on the 2010 World Cup campaign (also including the finals). You get bonus points for playing in playoffs and for making the finals, so both the France playoff in 2009, the Estonia one in 2011 and the finals appearance in 2012 earned us bonus points. That’s why we’re second seeds.
Bad news is FIFA use a totally different system and things are so bad we could be fifth seeds for the 2018 World Cup qualifiers if we don’t buck up our act.
@Finn Maccul ehh no, most of pot 3 are not etter than us, two are, perhaps three.
“better”
… because Romania lost their play-off and that kept us in pot 2 by the skin of our teeth.
Some of the pot 4 teams would give us a run for our money home and away in a qualifying group!
Spot on Mick . If we’re going to be honest about this we belong in Pot 4. It’s all part of the painful process of recognizing the problem before the healing begins. It should come as no surprise to anyone if we do not qualify .
Agree, Gerry. But I’m a little more hopful this time around. All the Trap stuff aside – with anyone managing – we were always going to be fighting for third or fourth place with Austria once Germany and Sweden came out in the World Cup qualifying group.
My hope is that the new management team instill some vigour and edge on the players and we get a kind draw – then we have a decent chance under the new expanded system of qualification.
But you are right, at best, we are really a fourth tier seeded nation.
The seedings are always messed up between FIFA and UEFA, just look where Iceland are!
Got my fingers crossed for:
Greece
Us
Norway
Latvia
Moldova
Gibraltar
About as do-able a group as we can get. COYBIG!
Would love an away trip to Gibraltar.
You’d actually be going to Portugal as the Gibraltar national stadium has to be rebuilt or improved to meet UEFA guidelines. Close enough I guess :P
Expect:
Spain
us
Turkey
Poland
Iceland
Kazakhstan
I think gibraltar are in with a good shout of winning it.They’ve come a long way in the last 3 months and have some top quality players.I’ll be throwing a few hundred on them anyway!
I don’t know, I’m putting my yearly wages up for a Liechtenstein vs San Marino EURO final.
Their defence is a rock
The odds look good for us- 23 out of 53 teams qualify- 1st and 2nd in every group automatically qualify and even after that there are still 5 places up for grabs through best runner up and playoffs. Fingers crossed
If we don’t qualify we need to stop playing football!
Need to stop laying foreign games and sending our hard earned cash to England to pay woman abusing drug addict Wendy ball players.
Says the guy sporting a Celtic Jersey.
Whoa, Gibraltar are now in UEFA? That’s news to me.
Fingers crossed for years lads…
We’re going to win the euros!
I don’t know, whole of Europe is gone to pot.
I wouldn’t like to be in the same group as the North.
Ideal group…
Bosnia,
Ireland,
Slovakia,
Estonia,
N. Ireland,
San Marino
Won’t make euro 16 anyway pot 1 or pot 5 makes no difference.
Euro 16 or Hill 16.
Better not say anymore I might get bitten
Would love to draw Northern Ireland. They’re even more useless than we are. Didn’t they lose recently to the mighty Luxembourg?
Maybe they are but anything can happen in a derby.
Maybe a derby game with two teams in the same league. But we are miles better than them with better players. We hammered the Nordies 5-0 in the Carling Nations Cup.
The best outcome might be (something of a Euro-Eastern adventure):
Bosnia
Ireland
Montenegro
Belarus
Georgia
San Marino
The nightmare might be:
Spain
Ireland
Serbia
Poland
Iceland
Kazakhstan
There should be an alternative Euro’s between Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, Malta, Andorra, San Marino & Gibraltar.
….who’s your money on?