Eddie Jones says England must tighten belts in all areas amid cost of pandemic

England players are facing reduced dining options as part of the budget cuts forced upon Eddie Jones in the wake of the financial crisis at Twickenham.

The COVID-19 pandemic is compelling the Rugby Football Union to make a quarter of its workforce redundant amid projections that it will lose £107million in a downturn lasting five years.

And the impact is also being felt by Jones, who must undertake a range of cost-cutting measures as a busy autumn looms.

Watch the Lions in South Africa in 2021

Watch the Lions in South Africa in 2021

“We’re going to have to run tighter budgets,” said Jones, speaking on behalf of Umbro, the new Official Technical Kit Partner to England Rugby.

“We’ll definitely have to be more cognizant of costs because things are tighter. It might be the range at dinner – instead of being two dishes it might be one dish. Those sorts of things.

“It’s like any operation – when things are difficult as they are, you’ve just got to try to minimise your operational cost and maximise your revenue.

“Everyone’s pockets are tighter at the moment. We’ll have to look at tightening the staff, tightening the operational costs.

“But that’s all part of the environment and we can handle that. We just have to get on with that and it won’t affect the quality of the high performance environment for the players.

“We have to make sure we play good rugby in Test matches so that people want to be involved in England rugby, so that’s got to be our driver. At the same time we need to minimise the cost in creating that team.”

England’s autumn begins on October 31 with a rearranged fixture against Italy, concluding their Six Nations campaign, before embarking on the Eight Nations Tournament.

* Eddie Jones is an Umbro ambassador. Umbro will be launching its new England Rugby kit on the 7th September. For more information visit: www.umbro.co.uk/rugby.