Eddie Jones responds to criticism on Dan Cole over scrum claims

England coach Eddie Jones has come out in defence of prop Dan Cole after the 29-year-old was accused of scrumming illegally in the Brisbane Test by former Australian captain Phil Kearns.

Cole and Australia's Scott Sio were involved in a scrum encounter in the 53rd minute of the game following which referee Romain Poite sin-binned the Wallabies loose-head which didn't go well with the two-time World Cup winner.

Kearns accused Cole of "angling in" illegally and urged the referee to "take a good, long, hard look at yourself."

“It will be interesting if the referees — I’m not sure if they go back and watch ‘Spider-cam’ at all, but Dan Cole was angling right in the whole time,” said Kearns.

“It’s pretty obvious to see.

“Yeah, Scotty Sio didn’t have his best scrummaging performance and Cole was dominant but referees, take a good, long, hard look at yourself.”

Jones, 56, slammed Kearns for his comments and believes Cole was well within his right in the scrum.

"Every side I coach, I coach them to play legally. We want to play legally, we want to scrum straight, we want to scrum square, we want to scrum at them," Jones said.

"We were disappointed on the weekend that we weren't allowed to scrum at them. A couple of times when we were allowed to scrum, we took them.

"We want to scrum straight, we want to scrum square and we want to take them. That's how we teach them how to scrum.

"We'll let the referee adjudicate on Saturday. I've got great confidence in Craig Joubert - he'll referee the game and he won't let Phil Kearns referee the game.

"If Phil Kearns was refereeing the game, Australia would win every time."

Prior to the first Test, Kearns criticised Jones’ coaching methods and insisted that the former Wallabies coach can only bring short-term success to England.