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Cape Town - England coach Eddie Jones says the squad were shocked by the speed of the Barbarians' play at the beginning of their 63-45 record defeat on Sunday.
England seemed unable to cope with the high intensity and quick tempo of the Barbarians' play, especially in the opening quarter, and conceded nine tries as they went down to their fourth defeat in a row.
Although Jones' side were significantly weakened with 15 of their top players to return on Monday having been on duty with Exeter and Saracens for the Premiership final, the way in which the side struggled with the speed of the game has sent shivers through the camp.
“It felt like we were playing one-day cricket; score for score,” Jones told the Independent.
“In the first 20 minutes, we struggled to adjust to the speed of the game. We got a bit shocked by it. We adjusted well, got ourselves back into the game and played some good rugby. But then when we got fatigued in the last 20 minutes we made some crucial errors in execution and it ended up costing us the game.
“As an experience for some of the young players, it was absolutely outstanding. I was just speaking to a number of them then and they just struggled to cope with the speed of the game.
“You’ve got to look at what the game is. We don’t have our top 15 players and we have another 22 players unavailable, so it was a test of our depth. We played against a very good, fast, powerful Barbarians team and at times we struggled to cope with that.”
