England head coach Eddie Jones admitted that his team’s performance in their win over France was not as poor as he initially thought.

Jones was bullish in his assessment after England’s narrow 19-16 win at Twickenham but having watched the tape reflected that England were only a few minor errors away from delivering a good performance.

“Having watched the video again, we actually didn’t play that badly,” Jones said.

“If you take away three or four easy dropped passes and some, at times, fragile defence the majority of our game was pretty sound. The scrum improved a lot.

“We didn’t attack like England until the last 20 minutes of the game and our stats in that period were absolutely outstanding in terms of work rate, execution and effort.

“It was one of those games that looked worse when you saw it live, but having watched it again we weren’t far away from the money and we’re certainly on the way to playing a very good game against Wales.”

Jones was also eager to avoid getting sucked in to England’s previous trips to Wales, with England having won just 21 of their 61 games over the Severn.

“I’ve spoken to a number of people. There’s a certain story people like to paint when you’re playing Wales,” Jones said.

“If you get involved in painting that picture, you get involved in the painting. We don’t want to be involved in the painting, we want to paint our own picture.

“And the picture we paint isn’t going to be the picture that was painted in the past.”