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Le Crunch: England's message to Nigel Owens

SIX NATIONS SPOTLIGHT: England have urged referee Nigel Owens to crack down on any attempts by France to deliberately slow the game in their Six Nations clash at Twickenham on Sunday.

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Eddie Jones’ side are keen to take advantage of what they believe will be a powerful France side’s lack of conditioning but are concerned their efforts will be frustrated by ‘Les Bleus’ employing a variety of underhand tricks such as taking an excessive amount of time to form line-outs and scrums.

But Welsh official Owens has long been one of the world’s leading officials and England attack coach Scott Wisemantel said: “Nigel’s an experienced referee who understands the ebb and flow of games. He’ll do the best to keep the game moving I think.”

England head coach Jones said there was only so much his side could do in their efforts to speed up the game.

“It’s difficult – just look at ball-in-play time,” said Jones.

“We have just had the Japanese coaches with us for the week – Jamie Joseph and Tony Brown – and they are aiming to have a ball-in-play time of close to 50 minutes,” he added.

“France average 30 minutes. They kick the ball out a lot and look for long stoppages before scrums,” added the Australian, who will hope England can build on their opening 32-20 win away to Six Nations champions Ireland.

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“It is hard to get pace in the game now the way the game is being refereed because increasingly we are getting longer stoppages, which I don’t think is healthy for the game.”

England loosehead prop Mako Vunipola, however, joked: “For me as a front rower I would be happy if they slowed it down!”

AFP

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