Smith exit shows split personality of Eddie Jones’s England regime remains

Just one weekend in and the Six Nations is already stirring powerful emotions. In Scotland, with the Calcutta Cup under lock and key once again, there is renewed optimism and pride after the significant outcome on Saturday. And in England? To say Eddie Jones and his squad headed homewards with much to ponder is a familiar understatement.

Even given the tricky conditions at Murrayfield, the visitors’ 20-17 defeat will be a source of acute and prolonged frustration. Apart from anything else, a couple of uneasy trends are emerging. For the third successive year any faint grand slam hopes have vanished within 80 minutes and, for the fourth time in five seasons, Jones has been unable to outflank Scotland’s head coach Gregor Townsend.

If England are going to conquer the world next year, they could do a lot worse than take several leaves from Scotland’s book. Did Townsend whip off his fly-half Finn Russell at the start of the final quarter with his team trailing 17-10? Of course he didn’t. The Scots had a clear plan, stayed calm, trusted in their playmaker’s ability and, ultimately, reaped the rewards for doing so.

And England? The flawed decision to remove Marcus Smith from the fray neatly symbolised the split personality that remains a feature of Jones’s regime. The young fly-half had done pretty much everything asked of him and put England in front with the kind of smart, excellently taken try that separates a high-class fly-half from a moderate one.

But then – boom – he was gone. Rather than being trusted to finish the job off, he was sitting idle in the stand. It felt very much like a conservative move and, even worse, a premeditated one. Had the game been at Twickenham, the boos of English supporters would have rung