Quite how the US Navy SEALS’ mission to obliterate Osama Bin Laden can be related to the green fields of France next autumn is beyond my ken except that Eddie Jones is not the first England coach to make such a link.
His visit to the SEALS’ base in San Diego stirred memories of Clive Woodward taking his England squad to the Royal Marines Commando centre in Devon before the 1999 World Cup. Their failure to survive Jannie de Beer’s bombardment of drop goals in the quarter-final suggests that it didn’t do them a lot of good.
Woodward has long since claimed otherwise and that a senior officer t...