Six Nations 2016: Jonathan Joseph has to play catch-up in the race to impress Eddie Jones

Outside centre dazzled at start but World Cup pain dented progress

Jonathan Joseph, with ball, trains with England at Pennyhill Park (Getty)

It was not so very long ago, but it seems like forever. When Jonathan Joseph was ripping up trees by the forest-full in last year’s Six Nations – a finish as classy as it was crucial against Wales in Cardiff on opening night, two beauties against Italy at Twickenham and an early strike to put the Scots in their box in the penultimate round – he looked like a World Cup attraction in the making. Then the World Cup happened.

Joseph was injured in the opening game against Fiji – unsurprisingly, given the rib-arranging hits dished out by Akapusi Qera, Vereniki Goneva and their friends that night – and he missed the defeat by Wales.

Patched up for the win-or-bust meeting with the Wallabies, he somehow went the distance, thereby maximising his own misery as England slid out of their own tournament at breakneck speed.

And what followed? Twenty valedictory and entirely pointless minutes of action off the bench in the “dead” game against mighty Uruguay. Thanks. For nothing.

Four months on, the 24-year-old Bath midfielder is still playing catch-up – and it isn’t easy. If there has been precious little fun to be had on the club front, where the West Countrymen have been in something looking uncannily like free-fall for much of the campaign, the England outside centre position has generated vast amounts of white noise, most of it associated with Elliot Daly of Wasps.

“He’s having a stand-out season,” acknowledged Joseph when asked about his uncapped challenger who, together with the Saracens lock Maro Itoje, has been at the forefront of the red-rose selection debate. “But then there’s talk about Manu Tuilagi and Henry Slade too. I can concentrate only on myself when you come down to it. I can’t affect what other people do.

“Anyway, it’s not so much about thinking of being dropped,” he continued, phlegmatically. “It’s about wanting to do yourself, your family and your country proud by not leaving anything out there on the pitch. You might make mistakes, you might not have your best game, but as long as the effort is right up there you can’t really blame yourself. If it wasn’t your match, you go back and review it and try to play better the week afterwards.”

In terms of “controlling the controllables”, as the modern player likes to put it, Joseph could use a big performance against the Italians in Rome this weekend.

England’s midfield has been in a state of flux since the retirement of the super-subtle shaper of fortunes Will Greenwood more than a decade ago and at some point in the none-too-distant future, the red-rose coach Eddie Jones is going to bring this sorry saga to an end. If Joseph wants to be a part of the solution in the long term, he needs to make an impact in the short term.

“Life under Eddie is slightly different,” he said, reflecting on the early weeks of the Australian’s “my way or the highway” regime. “Every new coach brings new ideas and a new system with him and if you don’t fit in – if he doesn’t like your style of play – you don’t have a place in the team.

“You’re always a little unsure of where you might stand when there’s a change at the top, but my attitude remains the same. I’ll focus on the things I can do and try to build on the rugby I played in last year’s Six Nations.”

Following the World Cup – a psychological trauma for all involved – Joseph sought corrective surgery for the physical trauma he had suffered against the Fijians, which took the form of a torn pectoral muscle. The operation denied him several weeks of rugby rehabilitation on the field, and although he recovered more quickly than had been initially expected, he was still some distance away from full match trim when Jones made his initial selection calls last month.

Since then, Joseph has been caught up in Bath’s travails at both Premiership and European levels. “Things haven’t been working for us,” he acknowledged, “but it’s not as if we’re not trying to win, or not working in an effort to improve as players. I think we’ve been quite unfortunate in certain respects.”

Unlike last weekend’s tournament opener against the Scots at Murrayfield, which was no end of fun for the piano-shifting likes of Billy Vunipola but rather less of a party for those who were put on this earth to tinkle the ivories, Sunday’s contest with the Azzurri should provide Joseph with a chance to play a tune or two. And if he does so against a direct opponent as dangerous as Michele Campagnaro, he will put himself in credit.

“It wasn’t the most exciting game up in Edinburgh,” he agreed, “but you do what you do for the team. I hope that in Rome we’ll see more of the free-flowing rugby people like to watch, but the Italians are a passionate side and we’ll have to take the sting out of them and the crowd before doing anything else. I think they’re a good side. You can’t underestimate anyone at international level.”

This “anyone” certainly includes the new Azzurri outside-half Carlo Canna, whose performance with ball in hand against France in Paris last weekend impressed a number of good judges – not least one Eddie Jones. However, the 23-year-old Zebre playmaker is just a little suspicious of the good vibes heading his way from the direction of England.

“It’s nice to receive those sorts of compliments, but maybe Jones is trying to put pressure on me ahead of Sunday,” he said after his “full house” scoring exploits in France. “Rather than focusing on the points we scored in Paris, or the praise that has followed, I’ve been thinking more of the kicks I missed.

“In my role, I can’t afford to do those things. We paid for a lack of experience against the French, but that game is now gone. Now we are working on ways of causing England problems.”