England edge out Wales at Twickenham

By Mark Stevens
26/2/22

England head coach Eddie Jones was full of praise for his side as they made it back-to-back victories in this season’s Guinness Six Nations Championship with a 23-19 victory over Wales at Twickenham.

Marcus Smith's boot built a 12-0 lead for the hosts by the end of the first half before Harlequins club-mate Alex Dombrandt went over not long after the restart.

Wales, though, rallied as Josh Adams raced in and Nick Tompkins squirmed between white shirts to make it 17-12.

England - who included the Exeter Chiefs quartet of Luke Cowan-Dickie, Jack Nowell, Sam Simmonds and Henry Slade in their match-day squad - scored a pair of penalties through Smith, but Kieran Hardy's try kept the contest in doubt until the final play.

"It was a very good win for us, plenty of resilience, plenty of toughness," said head coach Jones."We put ourselves in a good winning position in the first 50 minutes, had a period of 20 minutes where we were untidy in our defence and let them back in the game, but then the last few minutes I thought we were exceptional, for a young team that is developing I thought there were good signs out there."

Jones was pleased by the showing of his young guns at a pivotal point in their campaign. However, he will have to assess the condition of Cowan-Dickie in the next 24 hours after the Chiefs hooker was forced off in the first half with what looked like a nasty knee injury.

"We've got young guys and they have to learn how to deal with these situations," he added. "A Test match against Wales is a completely different beast to anything you have in your life, so that is a great learning experience."

Ben Youngs became England Men's most capped player of all-time, when he replaced Harry Randall on the hour mark, and Jones was full of praise for the scrum-half.

"There is no better team man than him, he always wants to be the starting half back, but he accepted for this game he was a finisher and he came on and did his job brilliantly. His kicking, his organisation and talk on the field was first class. We're so lucky to have a guy like him with such experience."