Eddie Jones has said that Courtney Lawes has only an “outside chance” of taking on Italy in the Six Nations next Sunday, having missed the defeat to Scotland due to the after-effects of a head injury.
Lawes, who turns 33 this month, is among England’s most experienced players and captained the side twice in the autumn series when Owen Farrell was unavailable. Farrell is out of this Championship with his second ankle injury in quick succession.
Lawes and Farrell are among a raft of first-choice players who missed the Scotland match with injury, but Jones will have been relieved that Manu Tuilagi made it through half an hour in Sale’s win over Harlequins.
“We’ll need to pick the best 23 to play against Italy,” said Jones. “Courtney at this stage has an outside chance of playing against Italy. He is progressing well.”
Jones was pleased with the performance of his team – the youngest he has selected for a Six Nations match – at Murrayfield.
“We played well,” he said. “We set out to take the game to Scotland and we did that in the first half, but the points didn’t show that. Our response in the first part of the second half was outstanding and we were in a position to win the game.
“Sometimes you play well and don’t get the result and this was an example of that. Sometimes you play well and do get the result, which was what happened for us against South Africa [in the autumn]. It was three points either way. We weren’t quite clinical enough when we had the ball, and gave them two tries – one off first phase and one off two phases. And that’s the game.
“I’m really proud of our boys. They got stuck in, they took Scotland on and considering the experience difference, I’m really proud of them and I know we will go and play better rugby than we did tonight.”
Jones felt Scotland “deserved to win” but also that they got the “rub of the green”.
“There’s a lot of optimism,” he said. "Obviously, we are disappointed by the result, let’s not get away from that. Scotland deserved to win. But in this situation there were three points between the teams and a number of decisions which could be debated. You’ve got one lucky winner and one unlucky loser. Congratulations to Scotland, they got the rub of the green, but we may get it in the next game”.
