Eddie Jones is back to his old tricks yet again as he's labelled Ireland as favourites ahead of the Six Nations clash in Twickenham this Saturday.
In his press conference on Monday ahead of the game Jones opened it by saying;
Three teams can win the tournament and we’re delighted to be one of those three,” said Jones this afternoon.
Ireland are the favourites for the game. They’ve been in good form in the autumn and are a very settled team, well-coached by Andy Farrell.
Technically, Jones is wrong as England are one-point favourites with the bookies ahead of this Six Nations game. It was clear from the get go what Jones was trying to do. He wants people to underestimate his team and hope that it will lead to complacency from Ireland on Saturday.
He continued on the Ireland hype-train further, saying;
They are literally, and I say it without any hesitation, the most cohesive side in the world,
The bulk of their team train together for the bulk of the year, they’re very well co-ordinated in their attack, they’re very structured, they’ve very sequenced set-plays and they’re tough around the breakdown. So, they pose a great challenge for us.
We’re looking forward to the challenge, we’re not intimidated by any team. We’re looking forward to playing against them.
Eddie Jones' history of Six Nations mind games
Jones is a fan of playing mind games with the opposition. He routinely plays down the ability of his own team and hypes up the opposition, it's all just a big game of chess to him. He's had some memorable press conferences over the years and even more memorable quotes.
It's not even the first time he's done this trick this year. Before England's Six Nations opener against Scotland Eddie Jones repeatedly said that Scotland were the favourites and well he was right to do so as Scotland won 20-17.
Hopefully Jones' prediction is correct once again.
See Also: Ireland's 2016 U20 World Championship Finalists: Where Are They Now?
