This sounds like fighting talk.
Roll on kick-off at Twickenham this Saturday, if only so we can draw a line under Eddie “PT Barnum” Jones’ line on match promotion.
After earlier turning his back on Stuart Lancaster’s meek and mild England by giving it the whole “nobody likes us and we don’t care” shtick, he is now turning his attention to the opposition. Namely Ireland and their influential playmaker Johnny Sexton.
Jones was speaking to the media this afternoon about Sexton and his well publicised concussion injuries, and how he feels that his parents will be worried about the Leinster man’s issues with head and neck injuries.
“Sexton is an interesting one, they’ve talked about him having whiplash injury which is not a great thing to talk about.
“I’m sure his mother and father would be worried about that. Hopefully, the lad’s all right on Saturday to play.”
Beneath all the concern however, Jones admits that his side will be doing a France on it this Saturday, and targeting the former Racing Metro man, and all the Irish players, as much as possible.
“We target players all the time. That’s part of rugby is it not? Is there some sort of special law there?”
“There are 15 players out there. Are we supposed to not run at one player? Hang on, hang on, he’s got a red dot on his head, we don’t run at him.
“Rugby’s a game of XV players on the field. When we’re attacking, we’re attacking weak defenders. Why would we run at the strongest defender?
“We are not going to run at their strongest defenders, we’ll always run at their weakest.
“I’m not saying Sexton is a weak defender. Maybe France did. We’re going to be targeting players in the Ireland side.
“We want to win and you win a game of rugby by attacking their weak points and to say that’s unfair is just ridiculous.”
If players needed any extra motivation to win our first game of the Six Nations, Jones has surely just given it.
