Wales vs England result: Eddie Jones says Welsh are Rugby World Cup favourites after going top of world rankings

Wales sit top of the World Rugby rankings for the first time in their history after defeating their rivals 13-6, though had a largely controversial try to thank for the victory

Eddie Jones said that Wales are now favourites to win the Rugby World Cup, after watching his England side suffer a 13-6 defeat in Cardiff in a result that puts Warren Gatland’s side top of the world rankings.

In a match that failed to live up to last weekend’s spectacle at Twickenham, Wales were able to hold onto their first-half advantage that was built around George North’s cross-field kick try, which transpired to be the only one of the game as Dan Biggar and Leigh Halfpenny combined to kick the rest of Wales’s points, with George Ford landing two penalties in response for England.

The victory means Wales overtake New Zealand at the top of the world ranking, despite the All Blacks thrashing Australia 36-0 on Saturday, to put them on top of the world for the first time since the ranking system was introduced in 2003.

“They're favourites for the Rugby World Cup now,” Jones said afterwards. “When you go to No 1, you're favourites for the Rugby World Cup.

“I thought it was a brilliant World Cup game for us. We deliberately started the game with a young team and we wanted to see how they’d handle backing up from last week. It’s always a difficult game when you play Wales at the Principality Stadium. The crowd is loud and the referee gets affected by the crowd, so it’s a difficult game. I thought they stuck in there very well and then we gave some of the more experienced guys a run in the last 20 minutes and they came home strong. The result is the result, but for us it’s a big step forward.

“We set these games up to deliberately practice things. We’ve got other options from the five metre line which we haven’t shown yet and won’t show for a while. We want to get our tank going so it’s a bit easier to defend our maul when they know it’s coming. They did it very well and credit to Wales.”

But Gatland was unmoved on the accolade, despite the rise to the top of the rankings coming largely thanks to the 14-match winning streak that ran until last week’s defeat.

“It’s just a number isn’t it,” Gatland said. “It’s kind of like there are people out there who have stats and things, people are going to make a lot of it.

“We’ll just probably look at it and go ‘wow, we were No 1 in the world at some stage’ and that’s a nice accolade to have but it’s all about the next few months and backing that up by performing well at the World Cup. We have a couple of fairly hard games against Ireland to go as well so it’ll be nice for a day, but it’s not something that we will trumpet in terms of shouting from the rooftops. We’ve got to keep things in perspective.”

Jones also refused to criticise the match officials, despite England being reduced to 13 men at the time of North’s match-deciding try. Referee Pascal Gauzere halted the match to watch a replay of a deliberate knock-on from Anthony Watson, which resulted in the England wing being sent to the sin-bin.

But at the same time scrum-half Willi Heinz had been forced off the field for a head-injury assessment, leaving England down to 13 players. Bizarrely, replacement scrum-half Ben Youngs was left stranded at the side of the pitch as he wasn’t allowed onto the field, with Wales fly-half Dan Biggar taking a quick penalty and launching a cross-field kick to Josh Adams despite Watson still being on the field of play.

George North scores the only try of Wales' victory over England (PA)

The England head coach did however joke that his side will need rugby league practice next week to learn how to manage a situation when the team is reduced to 13, suggestion that the frustrations surrounding the incident were not far beneath the surface.

“It is what is it mate,” Jones added. “We take the good with the bad. But we do need to learn how to defend better with 13 men, I should have studied my rugby league harder this week. I'll go up to Wigan and get some lessons how to defend with 13 men.”

Wales now sit top of the world rankings (Getty)

England captain George Ford was at the time holding a team talk to mark out what they needed to do to cope with the one-man deficit, which saw all of them huddled in together and provided the space for Biggar and Adams to exploit. Such was Wales’s numerical advantage that Biggar’s cross-field kick from the next play found an unmarked North to canter over the line, but Ford took a more analytical approach to the mix-up.

“We were trying to discuss what to do with the next 10 minutes with the yellow card with Anthony off the field,” he said. “It’s something we have to anticipate better. I’m not too sure what was going on on the sidelines, but it’s a good reminder for us as it’s seven points and ultimately that was the difference today. We need to be on our toes a bit better for us going forward.”