Eddie Jones has heralded the influence of Henry Slade on England’s attacking evolution but will delay a decision on whether he can fit the Exeter playmaker, Marcus Smith and Owen Farrell into the same backline.

The England head coach also explained that his side’s tactical shift had been encouraged by the fact that their pack is no longer “one of the biggest in the world”, as it was when he took over from Stuart Lancaster six years ago.

At the start of the autumn campaign, Jones explicitly prioritised kick-returns and lineouts as areas for England to become “more aggressive” in possession.

Their telling try in a 27-26 win over South Africa, finished by Raffi Quirke in the 65th minute, arrived from the second of those platforms. In that respect, it provided an endorsement of that strategy, as well as the work of Martin Gleeson, the new attack coach.

Slade, adopting the role of first-receiver, was instrumental. Having fizzed a miss-pass to Freddie Steward directly from a first-half scrum, which led to a try for the 20-year-old full-back, he sucked in Elton Jantjies and Damian de Allende before slipping Joe Marchant through South Africa’s midfield. Quirke followed up to dive over.

“Glees has done a great job, particularly in terms of our first-phase attack from lineouts,” said Jones, evaluating his team’s attacking improvements. “We saw us score a first-phase try from that which was brilliant and his influence has been very good.

“The guy who has really come on is Henry Slade. We have played him a little bit differently from normal. The concept we are working on is playing the backs more to their strengths rather than to a position.

“We have been playing around with that a little bit and we feel like that is the way to go going forward. That ball he threw to Joe Marchant, he got to the outside of his defender [Jantjies] and then got to the inside shoulder of De Allende and created the space for Marchant to go through. It was a beautiful ball.”

Although he played every minute of the autumn campaign, Slade did not assume the first-receiver role from set pieces while Farrell was on the field against Australia. Instead, the 28-year-old operated like a full-back. Farrell and Smith did dovetail nicely to slice open the Wallabies for Steward’s try in that game, but Slade’s ball-playing excellence in a stirring victory over the world champions cannot be ignored.

Asked whether Smith, Slade and captain Farrell were presenting him with a three-into-two conundrum, Jones was non-committal. “We don’t have to worry about that now, do we?” he said.

Circumstances may yet narrow down England’s midfield options for the Six Nations and simplify Jones’ selection quandary. Manu Tuilagi tore his hamstring against South Africa and Farrell is recovering from ankle surgery.

To retain Slade in the all-important first-receiver role from set pieces, pairing him with Marchant or Ollie Lawrence would keep a similar balance of centres. Reintroducing Lawrence would reprise the Smith, Lawrence, Slade combination that started the July game against the USA.

Alternatively, Slade could shift to outside centre. Mark Atkinson was deployed between Smith and Slade for the final stages of the 69-3 thrashing of Tonga. Dan Kelly, another Leicester Tigers youngster, started at inside centre in the middle of Smith and Slade when Canada came to Twickenham.

A smaller team, but higher intensity

Jones revealed that England had been honing a game plan to beat South Africa from the start of their week-long training camp in Jersey before the autumn schedule even began.

He is now eager for his players to carry confidence from that result, as well as conviction in a less conservative approach, into the Six Nations. Interestingly, Jones explained that picking a smaller side had changed the course of his tactics.

“The one thing I know that’s fun in rugby is winning,” he said. “I’ve never seen a happy dressing room that’s lost. Never. Secondly, when I took over England we probably had one of the biggest forward packs in the world. Now I think we rank sixth in the world in terms of size.

“And size and winning has a high correlation in rugby. The ball in play [against South Africa] was 30 minutes. The average work period was 36 seconds, so we’re playing a high-powered, intense game in small blocks of periods with long rests. With TMO [stoppages] and HIA [for players] ball-in-play is going down. Work periods are getting smaller and the recovery periods are getting longer.

“We’ve had to find a way, without having a massive forward pack and without having massive backs, to play differently. It’s all been driven by the requirement to win.

“And then you’ve got to show that to the players, get them to believe in it. And then you’ve got a deal. And once you’ve got a deal you don’t know what you can do.”