England vs Italy: Eddie Jones calls on World Rugby to support Italian plight after stagnating in the Six Nations

Eddie Jones has called on World Rugby to do more to help Italy as the gulf between them and the rest of the Six Nations appears to have widened following the opening two rounds of the championship.

England face bottom-placed Italy on Sunday knowing that anything other than a bonus-point victory will be deemed a disappointment, having seen Wales and Ireland put 33 and 63 points on them respectively in their last two weeks. The England camp, and in particular head coach Jones, have been keen to play down expectations and insist that targeting anything other than a win would be disrespectful to their opponents, but they are also aware that expectations are high heading into the Twickenham encounter.

While England will be targeting a 17th consecutive victory – a 16th under Jones’s guidance – Italy are facing something of a mini-crisis. In the head coach, Conor O’Shea, they have a talented and experienced individual who will only help Italian rugby, but as former head coach Nick Mallett told The Independent this week, the problems lie much deeper in Italy’s heritage.

That’s why Jones believes that the only thing he would advise is additional support from rugby’s world governing body. Refusing to be drawn on the Six Nations relegation debate – with Georgia knocking on the door with no reply – the Australian had one piece of advice for the head table.

“The only thing I would say about that is Italy need to be supported,” Jones said. “If their rugby is not developing as people want then they should be supported by World Rugby and the rest of the Tier One countries because they are an important country.

“It is never just financial – to make a good sporting team you need financial power, you need intellect and you need the desire so you have got to find ways to help them.

“To me (relegation) is not something I want to delve into – it doesn’t have anything to do with us beating them on Sunday. All I think is they should be given support.”

Beating the opposition is something Jones does quite well. He took Australia to the Rugby World Cup final in 2003, was part of the victorious South Africa set-up four years later, and masterminded the greatest upset of all when his Japan team beat the Springboks 17 months ago before taking the England job.

But he also passed on his methods to a one Brendan Venter, the 47-year-old South African who after learning his trade under Jones at Saracens, succeeded the Australian and promptly helped lift the Premiership side to where they are today. He is also part of Italy’s coaching team, the defence coach working under O’Shea and alongside former England player and coach, Mike Catt.

“He is a very strong character,” Jones said of Venter. “I brought him into Saracens initially as a defence coach and then he ended up taking over from me which was a great result for the club. He took the club and set the club’s platform for being successful.”

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Jones is confident that they will not have any inside knowledge of the England plan, insisting that this is a very different team to the one that Catt work with and Venter learned from. But he does believe that, given time, his old protégé will go on to have a positive effect in Italian rugby.

“You look at him he is an agent of change. Everywhere he goes he brings change,” Jones adds. “He brings good characteristics to a team; they work hard, they defend hard – it is that typical South African grit in defence. You have seen that at certain times with the Italian side when they beat South Africa they showed that – he is an influential character.”