Jones adamant England problems ‘controllable’ after Argentina defeat

Eddie Jones insisted England’s problems were far from serious after a 30-29 defeat by Argentina in their Autumn Nations opener on Sunday.

The Pumas ended a 10-match losing streak in the fixture dating back to 2009 as they won against England at Twickenham for just the second time.

Emiliano Boffelli was Argentina’s hero, the Edinburgh wing scoring 25 of their points, including the clinching penalty 10 minutes from time after going over for one of the visitors’ two tries.

This match had added significance given the two teams will meet again in their opening game of next year’s World Cup in France.

But Jones played down the impact of Sunday’s reverse, which came ahead of what are set to sterner Tests this month against New Zealand and world champions South Africa.

“The World Cup is 11 months away and a lot happens in 11 months,” Jones told reporters.

“A lot can happen in a week,” added the Australian ahead of next week’s clash at home to Japan, one of his former teams.

“I’m not sitting here thinking we’ve got really strong problems within the team. For the most part I thought we dominated the game.”

‘Silly mistakes’

The veteran coach, in charge of the England side that lost the 2019 World Cup final to the Springboks, added: “We made some silly mistakes and we can change those things pretty easily.

“They’re all controllable. There are no real, big, structural issues within our game.

“You always want to have a more potent attack, always, but sometimes it doesn’t go like that. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to get it right.

“We’ve got to tidy it up a bit but we made enough line breaks to win probably two games, but we didn’t finish them off, which is an area we can always improve on.

“It’s a great opportunity for us now because we’re under the pump a bit which is good and I think we’ll respond really well to that. I’m looking forward to it.”

Argentina, four points behind at the interval, scored two tries early in the second half through Boffelli and Santiago Carreras as they surged into a 24-16 lead with half an hour left to play.

They then held their nerve to clinch a memorable win in front of a subdued Twickenham crowd of over 80,000.

There was a prolonged check for a knock-on by the television match official in the build-up to Carreras’s breakaway score and Jones, while careful not to criticise referee Andrew Brace, suggested the try should have been disallowed.

“The referee made the decision,” he said. “When you throw a pass and it goes that far behind, the best players in the world don’t generally do that so there was probably something else that happened.”