Eddie Jones breathes a sigh of relief again as England head coach demands consistency after beating Wales

Eddie Jones was able to breathe a sigh of relief for the second week in succession after yet another England fightback in Cardiff secured a 21-16 victory over Wales, two years after securing exactly the same result.

A late try from Elliot Daly ensured Jones’s 100 per cent record as England head coach remained intact, while their record winning streak stretched to 16 matches along with keeping their hopes of recording a second Grand Slam championship success alive.

The Australian immediately made it clear after the match that his side cannot afford to keep letting the opposition take the lead, as Wales did a week after France led at Twickenham going into the final stages.

“First thing is I think we’ve used up all of our get out of jail cards,” Jones said. “Against Italy we don’t want to be in that situation that we were today.

“I thought it was a great game of Test rugby today, a really good contest all around the park, a lot of credit has got to go to Wales, I though their defence today was superb, they hit hard and they hit often. They worked hard off the ball which made it a fantastic Test match.”

Jones was quick to draw praise on his second-row, an area of great strength in English rugby during his reign as head coach. Despite seeing his first-choice pairing of Maro Itoje and George Kruis split apart, the former by his move to blindside flanker and the latter absent with injury, Courtney Lawes and man-of-the-match Joe Launchbury turned in a superb showing defensively as well as taking on the bulk of the carrying.

It was the Northampton Saints lock, Lawes, who took the plaudits from Jones though, who admitted that the 27-year-old had transformed into the ice man in the changing rooms.

“At stages today it looked like we were going to fade out of the game, but we just kept on hanging in there and kept on sticking in there, people getting off their feet and making tackles like Courtney Lawes today,” he said. “He’s in there, he’s like a human ice pack, he’s got ice all over him, he made that many carries, that many tackles.

“Joe Launchbury, the same thing. A lot of good characters in the team and players who are still young, we had a young team out there today, which is even more attractive for us going forwards.”

Yet England could so easily have lost this match, and while the grit and character they continue to display is drawing widespread plaudits, Jones knows his side were second best for the middle 40 minutes of the match and added that there won’t be any let-off in training this week despite the Six Nations reaching the first of two fortnight breaks.

“It’s all about consistency. The first 20 we were probably a little over eager in attack and we just didn’t finish off opportunities out wide. We tended to throw long cut-out passes out wide instead of running straight and going through the hands.

“Old habits come back now and again. We were too tight in defence and gave them too much room on the outside."