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Jones had little time to prepare for a Nov. 3 game against the New Zealand Maori All Blacks which Canada lost 51-9. Canada played three more games in November under Jones, sandwiching a 37-27 win over Spain between a 54-22 loss to Georgia and a 57-17 defeat at the hands of Fiji.

Heading into the crucial series against Uruguay, both Jones and his players believe the coach has finally been able to put his fingerprints on the team.

“I think we are starting to see evidence of that in the practice sessions,” said Jones, a former Welsh international flanker.

“We need to play with pace. The first thing we worked on . . . was ball retention. We can’t talk about pace, we can’t talk about our back three, if we can’t manufacture opportunities for them.”

Jones oversaw a long training camp which included spending a week in the United Kingdom training with English side London Harlequins.

Veteran flying winger DTH van der Merwe said Jones has preached honing the same basic skills that young players are taught.

“We concentrate on simple stuff,” said van der Merwe, whose 28 tries is the most by a Canadian player. “Catch and pass, rolling in the tackle, placement of the ball. Those are just simple things a lot of people forget about when they get to the higher leagues.”

Captain Phil Mack said any team that strays from the basics enters dangerous territory.

“As soon as you get tired and the pressure comes on, mostly the first thing to go are the basics,” he said. “He (Jones) explained to us that at the end of the day the teams that win at this level are the ones that do the really little things really well.