England must create ‘their own party’ with Paris out to celebrate a French Grand Slam, says Eddie Jones

England v Ireland - Guinness Six Nations
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Eddie Jones has told his England side to focus on having their “own party” in Paris this weekend instead of spoiling France’s Grand Slam celebrations.

Excitement is high in Paris as France can secure a first Grand Slam in over 10 years if they beat England at the Stade de France on Saturday night.

England, in contrast, have had a difficult championship and could even finish fifth for the second year in a row.

They have been labelled as party poopers for Saturday’s showdown, but Jones wants England to focus on themselves.

“It’s more about having our own party, we’ve got a wonderful opportunity to play at the Stade de France, which is one of the most iconic sporting stadiums in the world,” he said.

“We know there will be 82,000 Parisians there, full of life and full of expectation.

“We get to play in a game where France have had a great Six Nations and we want to finish the Six Nations strongly, so it’s about creating our own party rather than spoiling France’s.

“They’re going to be a massively aroused team. They come through the centre with their big forwards and once they tie you up a little bit, they spread the ball to the backs.

“But they don’t do that without using their long kicking game to get them up the field. They’re a very disciplined team in attack and defence. We anticipate them playing a very similar sort of game.”

Jones has sprung a few surprises with his team, mainly naming Freddie Steward on the wing, but he has explained that is down to the anticipated aerial battle this weekend.

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“It’s more tactical in terms of the way we think the game will be played,” he said. “France are the highest kicking team in the world and I don’t think they’ll deviate away from that too much.”

Prop Kyle Sinckler also drops to the bench this week and Jones explained he hasn’t trained fully.

“Will Stuart has impressed us during the Six Nations. Kyle has had a difficult last two weeks,” he said.

“He had no training last week because of his back and this week he has been doing the return to [play] protocol through concussion. So the only training session he did was today. It makes it difficult for him to start the game and therefore that’s a fairly simply one to explain.

“Harry [Randall] and Ben [Youngs], we’ve used them starting or finishing. We feel that Harry's pace at the end of the game is going to be valuable.

“There may be opportunities to play against a more tiring defence and therefore he's better for us at the end of the game rather than the start of the game.”

As well as mixing up his team, Jones also revealed he altered the training week after the gruelling clash with Ireland.

“We wanted to make sure that we gave a good recovery time so we didn't train until Wednesday,” he said.

“Had a really good sharp session on Wednesday. Did some some slow walking stuff on Monday and Tuesday just to reinforce how we'd like to play the game or how we think the game could be played against France.

“And then we'll have another very short run tomorrow and we should be ready to go when they open the barrier gates.”

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