Warrington Wolves coach in camp with England

England head coach Eddie Jones has revealed that Warrington Wolves coach Steve Price has joined them in training this week ahead of facing France in the Autumn Nations Cup.

This comes after criticism of rugby union’s style and current lack of entertainment, which Jones believes is cyclical and attack will soon be the focus of the sport.

A number of suggestions to inspire attack have been suggested, including reducing the points awarded for penalties and short-range tries, but for Jones the solution is to speed up the game.

“I have always said we need to make the game more fatiguing. We have too many stoppages in place,” he said.

“We have got Steve Price, the Warrington Wolves coach, in camp. He was talking about how in Super League their ball in play is 68 minutes, which is twice what it is in Test match rugby.

“Our ball-in-play time has been affected by the fact that the out-of-play time has increased because of HIAs, because of scrum setting, because of TMOs.

Periods of rest

“Increasingly we are creating shorter periods of play and longer periods of rest and that does not produce any fatiguing effect in the game. We need that to come in to create some space.

“When you have got big guys – 120kg guys – if the ball in play is longer they are going to get fatigued and that means there’s going to be more space. That’s one way of getting a better balance in the game.”

Jones insists there is a lack of consistency from referees, but this is a result of the limitations caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

“One of the reasons why it is difficult at the moment is because referees aren’t getting together and there is a lack of face-to-face consolation of what we expect and what we need,” he said.

“Therefore we are getting quite wide variants of the way that the referees are applying the laws. And that is not contributing to the rugby maybe a lot of people want to see.”