SKIPPER Jamie George claimed his England side were not a million miles off the top teams in the Six Nations after they scrapped to a 16-14 win over Wales at Twickenham yesterday.
Steve Borthwick’s side have a weekend off before they head to Murrayfield to face Finn Russell’s Scotland in a fortnight. They have been beaten in their last three Calcutta Cup matches then they face Grand Slam holders Ireland, back at Twickenham, and France away in Lyon.
England have not beaten Ireland since 2020 and France battered them 53-10 at HQ last year but hooker George reckons his side are not too far behind those two.
He said: “I don’t think it is a huge leap. Obviously, we have got three difficult games coming up but I don’t think we are in a place to say it needs to be a quantum leap to get a load better.
“We are two from two, we have done well and we know we have got a huge amount of growth left in the squad.
“We need to focus on having an environment where people work on getting better every day and that is utilising what we can do in this fallow week, understanding the game plan we want to utilise in the next three games.”
England had two yellow cards in the first half – to Ollie Chessum and Ethan Roots – and it looked like a rerun of August’s pre-World Cup
clash when Owen Farrell was sent off and two others binned.
But winning from 14-5 down at the break was their biggest second half comeback in history to snatch victory at home.
And after last week’s 27-24 win over Italy it means England have beaten the teams they were expected to.
George added: “I prefer to keep 15 men on the field at Twickenham against Wales. We don’t seem to be able to do that very often. The fight and the character, to come out on the positive end of that result is a huge step for us.
“It is not going to be exactly how we want it to be right now but getting back to winning at Twickenham is vitally important and hopefully everyone had a good day.
“There is belief. We need to utilise this fallow week, we have got a good opportunity to rest up a bit then focus on getting better because we know we are going to need to get better going up to Murrayfield.
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We’re not far off the top teams, insists George
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