England head coach Eddie Jones hailed his players' performance in the aftermath of an absorbing 23-20 Guinness Six Nations win over France.
Mark Itoje - one of the game’s outstanding players - crossed over for a 77th minute try to clinch a morale-boosting win at Twickenham.
It means England can still end the campaign on a positive note, with a final-round clash against Ireland next weekend.
Speaking afterward, Jones conceded that they already have one eye on the 2023 World Cup.
"We need to start changing the way we are playing," he said.
"We are moving with our plan to be at our best at the World Cup in 2023, which will have to be a combination of playing our traditional, attritional style of game and then being able to play quickly.
"All of the laws are coming into the game that are encouraging the game to be faster.
"We are going to have to be like that."
"We really controlled ourselves and played with a lot of focus about what we needed to do..."
Here's what the boss had to say about #ENGvFRA ⤵— England Rugby (@EnglandRugby) March 13, 2021
In a battle that proved very entertaining, England showed grit to conjure up the late try after France had held the ascendency for large portions of the 80 minutes.
The manner of the performance was most pleasing for Jones, however, who commended his side's willingness to play open, flowing rugby.
"We always want to play like that," he said.
"We are disappointed that we didn't have 82,000 fans in here with us, they would have got more than their money's worth, the RFU would have been happy.
"We would love to play every game like that but sometimes it just doesn't work like that.
"There was reasonably quick ball, there was a good surface, not much rain, so it was good conditions to play a passing game.
"The game is funny. The game dictates the game.
"That doesn't make much sense I know. But it does."
France take on Grand Slam chasing Wales next Saturday and also have to play Scotland after the original fixture was postponed a fortnight ago.
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