Jones upbeat despite scruffy Argentina defeat

LONDON : A surprisingly upbeat Eddie Jones said he felt England played really well at Twickenham on Sunday but paid a heavy price for a series of mistakes and bad decisions as Argentina claimed a notable 30-29 victory.

Not many among the sodden 80,000 crowd are likely to have gone away in quite such a positive mindset after England struggled to turn dominant possession into clear opportunities, though they did score nice tries in each half through Joe Cokanasiga and Jack van Poortvliet.

Hit hard by 10 penalties - six of which Emiliano Boffelli turned into points, as he also scored a try and landed a conversion - England were never able to really get on top despite leading 16-12 at halftime.

"It was a frustrating game. We played really well but made some elementary mistakes and some individual mistakes that kept inviting them back into the game," Jones told reporters.

"We did enough good things but we did some silly things and sometimes the errors come from trying too hard. We have to tidy it up a bit but we made enough line breaks to win maybe two games."

Jones said that he feels referees are having an increasing influence on games, with "most moves ending in a penalty" and the spin-off is that players try to do too much, too soon when in possession.

"It was a stop-start game but there are no real big structural issues with our game," he said. "I reckon if we play that game 100 times the result won't be the same.

"I feel like the team went out and played how they wanted to play. But though we've made some silly mistakes, we can change those things pretty easily. I'm not sitting here thinking we have really strong problems - for the most part we dominated the game."

Michael Cheika was delighted as his Argentina team ended a 10