Eddie Jones has sights set on Manu Tuilagi’s Leicester Tigers test

There is some perfectly sound reasoning behind Eddie Jones’ decision to watch this afternoon’s Saracens-Northampton game at first hand. For one thing, the north London suburb of Hendon is only an hour or so from England’s hotel base in Bagshot, where the head coach is living and will continue to do so until the end of the Six Nations. For another, Jones retains enough of the front-row veteran’s fighting spirit to salivate over a Premiership meeting between two clubs who can barely stand the sight of each other.

Throw in a few players of obvious interest to the Australian – Jamie George, the hooker understudying the national captain Dylan Hartley, and Alex Goode, the second-string full-back, will start the contest for the home side; the red-rose props Kieran Brookes and Paul Hill are in the Northampton squad, as is the lock Courtney Lawes – and the logic is clear. Especially as the really significant league fixture of the weekend is the Sabbath set-to between Leicester and Exeter at Welford Road.

Even though Jones needs to be on site in Surrey tomorrow, plotting the next stage of England’s push towards a first Six Nations title in five years, he will not miss a minute of the action from the East Midlands. Tentative plans to fast-track Manu Tuilagi into the England match-day party for the humdinger with Wales at Twickenham a week today will become a good deal more conclusive if the human bowling ball rolls clean over another member of the red-rose midfield fraternity, Sam Hill, and helps himself to a strike or two.

It is also true to say that the coach will cast an educated eye over the performance of the uncapped Leicester forward Mike Williams, assuming the naturalised Zimbawean from Bulawayo plays an active role off the bench. Williams is still an under-the-radar sort, but while he has yet to complete a full campaign at Welford Road, having arrived from Worcester only nine months ago, he has achieved enough in next to no time to catch Jones’ gimlet eye.

Had he not crocked himself at the wrong time shortly after the Australian’s arrival at Twickenham in early December, he would certainly have made the Six Nations cut in late January.

Jones seems fairly happy with two areas of the team: the back three, where Mike Brown, Jack Nowell and Anthony Watson are pressing most of the right buttons and offer sufficient positional interchangeability to permit some impact-driven invention in the bench selection; and the front five, where genuine competition for places is keeping some very good players on their toes, Hartley included.

Indeed, it is reasonable to argue that England are better equipped at lock than any other leading Test nation, with the exception of South Africa.

However, the story is much more complicated everywhere else. Billy Vunipola may be playing the house down at No 8, ably supported by Chris Robshaw at blind-side flanker – a player who continues to impress Jones with his Trojan-like workaholism, even though the Trojans finished on the losing side in the one contest that really mattered to them – and the indefatigable James Haskell in the breakaway position. But this is nowhere near the finished product. Indeed, it may well be that Jones will not be happy with his combination until all three positions fall under new ownership.

Vunipola is the must-have accessory of this red-rose age, but there is at least a chance of him relocating to the blind-side position once Nathan Hughes, the Fijian No 8 from Wasps, ceases to be a Pacific islander for rugby purposes in a little over three months’ time. Hughes is not quite as strong as his fellow South Seas import but, then, neither was Hercules. What he will bring, according to the most recent evidence, is a little more straight-line speed off the base of the scrum, together with the footwork and offloading skills to scare the pants off defenders who, being on the back foot, already feel more than a little vulnerable.

Williams is patently another with challenger potential, and it is equally clear that the England hierarchy see the 19-year-old Sam Underhill as a long-term option at No 7 and intend to introduce him to the mix the moment the Six Nations is over. Underhill is studying economics at Cardiff University and playing his rugby with the Ospreys regional side, but the World Cup-winning flanker Richard Hill is mentoring him on behalf of the Twickenham hierarchy and there is every chance of him playing some kind of red-rose representative rugby this summer. Always assuming he stays fit. As we speak, he is nursing a neck injury and is unavailable for selection on either side of the River Severn.

Outside the pack, the usual conundrums remain. Ben Youngs and Danny Care are the senior scrum-halves, and while there is barely a fag paper in existence thin enough to slide between them, it is not because they are performing at the peak of their individual and deeply contrasting powers. Youngs has been a little short of snap during the Six Nations, while Care continues to hand gift-wrapped counter-attacking opportunities to the opposition with his overcooked tactical kicking.

As there is no guarantee that the Wasps half-back Joe Simpson will make the breakthrough expected by so many for so long – his sense of timing on the injury front is just about as bad as it gets – there may be possibilities ahead for Dan Robson, his clubmate. Robson is almost as Usain Bolt-like as his colleague and brings a little more to the party in the way of ballast, but with Wasps currently playing without a care in the world, no one quite knows how resourceful he might be in adversity.

All of which leaves us with the most vexed question of all. Jones is keeping his plans at 10, 12 and 13 very close to his chest, and it may be that he feels the existing midfield formation of George Ford, Owen Farrell and Jonathan Joseph is sufficiently potent for present purposes. After last weekend’s victory over Ireland, he went out of his way to praise Ford’s precision and control flat to the defensive line. He also sees Farrell as an indispensable fire-and-ice centre capable of fighting everyone else’s corner as well as his own and delivering an 85 per cent strike rate off the tee into the bargain. As for Joseph, there were signs against the Irish that the Bath player was growing into the role of creative spirit, demanding possession early and bringing his own ideas to the attacking game.

But the shadow of Tuilagi is looming over all three incumbents. Jones is deadly serious when he talks about the HBB as a No 12-in-waiting, so what happens when the waiting comes to an end? Farrell to 10 with Ford on the bench? It’s a possibility, given that the best goalkicker tends to be the first name on the team sheet. And what of Henry Slade, the brilliant Exeter midfielder? Might he be the outside-half Jones craves, or could he threaten Joseph and Elliot Daly as the No 13 of red-rose dreams?

We will not discover the truth of it over the final two rounds of the Six Nations, but by the time England confront the Wallabies on 25 June the road ahead should be clearer.