There is no ceiling to how good Marcus Smith can be according to Eddie Jones after the fly-half pulled the strings in England’s bonus-point success over Italy in Rome.
Smith ran in the first of five England tries in a 33-0 success that got England’s 2022 Guinness Six Nations campaign back on track, going on to be named Guinness Six Nations Player of the Match.
And Jones was clearly impressed with the performance of his fly-half, who was a constant threat for the Azzurri with his ability to play the game right on the gain line as he and new half-back partner Harry Randall thrived in the first half.
Jones said: “There’s no ceiling to how good he can be. If he keeps wanting to get better and keeps having a learning mindset, he could be an absolutely outstanding player at Test level by the World Cup. That’s really important to have a good ten.
“The half-backs made a really good start. There was a lot of pace on the ball early, the ruck ball was really quick and I thought they combined nicely. Particularly Marcus took the ball to the line really well in patches and Harry added that bit of zip-zip.
“Nine and ten is about being brilliant at the basics, doing the simple things really well over and over again. And it’s also about being communicators on the field – Harry with the forwards and Marcus more so with the back-rowers and the backs. I think they are making good, steady progress in both of those areas.”
England were able to take control early at the Stadio Olimpico with Smith crossing after ten minutes before two tries from Jamie George made it 21-0 at the break.
Against an Italy team that had led after half an hour against France, and kept the All Blacks scoreless for 20 minutes in the Autumn Nations Series, Jones was pleased at the way his team bossed the early exchanges.
And while he always wants more, Jones was generally impressed by the response from his team after an opening defeat to Scotland in Edinburgh.
He added: “For a young team it was a really good performance. Italy are a difficult team as they have shown against New Zealand and France and we didn’t really allow them into the game. We’re a little bit disappointed that we weren’t more clinical with our finishing but we’re creating good opportunities. We’re really pleased with our defensive intensity and work off the ball to not allow Italy to score. All in all, a good step forward for us.
“We always want more, a few more sparkles, a few more rockets. But I think we went out with a strong intent of taking the game to Italy, not allowing them into the game, and I think we did that. We would have liked to have finished it off a bit more, a few big rockets at the end that we didn’t get.”
