Jubilant Jones Praises England's Set Plays

New England coach Eddie Jones picked out his side's set-piece play as the deciding factor in their 15-9 Six Nations victory over Scotland.

In Jones' first game in charge since replacing Stuart Lancaster, England got their Six Nations challenge up and running with a hard-fought win at Murrayfield that also helped ease the memory of their miserable World Cup campaign.

Tries from George Kruis and Jack Nowell, as well as five points from the boot of Owen Farrell, saw England to victory over Scotland, whose response came through three Greig Laidlaw penalties.

Jones was pleased to start his reign with a victory on Saturday and felt the performance of his side's forwards was key to the triumph.

He said of England's set-piece play: "It won us the game in the end. Our line-out was very good in the second half and our scrum really came to life."

He added: "It was always going to be a difficult game, we knew that. We had two weeks together, we were virtually a new team doing new things and I'm really pleased with our application in the second half. Our defence was outstanding and there were some really good individual performances."

Jones singled out the displays of new captain Dylan Hartley, Dan Cole and James Haskell for praise, as well as that of man-of-the-match Billy Vunipola.

He said of the No 8: "Yeah he's pretty handy, Billy. He's not bad is he? He played really well and his work-rate was fantastic, good carries, good defence."

Regarding his side's overall performance, Jones said: "In all honesty, I always thought we were going to win the game. The only way we weren't going to win the game was if we did something silly.

"We wanted to move the ball more, we were practising that, we weren't able to do that and had to play a different way, and that's pragmatic football."