Joe Schmidt’s Ireland facing tough task keeping up with Eddie Jones's England

The swagger is back. England trooped off the luscious turf of the Stadio Olimpico on Sunday afternoon, happy in their own skin and beginning to feel good about themselves again.

Within 30 minutes of the final whistle, Eddie Jones was declaring to all and sundry that his focus had switched to their next game in the championship, and that he had already compiled a game plan sufficient to beat Ireland.

Contrast that with Joe Schmidt, who has always been a one-game-at-a-time merchant, when he admitted after Ireland’s defeat in Paris: “I haven’t got my head around too much of what we’ll be looking to do against England, we’ll use the next couple of days to assess who we’ve got fully fit.”