Zinzan Brooke: Eddie Jones may secretly want to lose

England's head coach Eddie Jones. Photo / AP

England v New Zealand is the game everyone wants to see. Frankly it is crazy that there was a four-year gap between the games so the proposal that they could face off on November 4 is brilliant. No 1 v No 2. Champions v Pretenders. Bring it on.

Even if England go past the joint record of 18 consecutive victories by beating Ireland in Dublin that does mean a great deal. I have tremendous respect for the run they have put together under Eddie Jones but if they have aspirations of calling themselves the best then they have to beat the best. It's that simple. Until then the record will have an asterisk next to it.

You can only settle the debate on the pitch and let's hope all the parties can come together to make it happen. Politics and money always comes into these things, but the sport as a whole will be poorer if it does not happen, like in boxing when two champion fighters avoid facing each other. All the fans will be desperate to see it. The RFU could probably sell out Twickenham three times over.

We'll have a preview of what is to come this summer when I would expect the Lions to have a very strong England representation. Maro Itoje v Brodie Retallick, Billy Vunipola v Kieran Read, Owen Farrell v Beauden Barrett are all great match-ups. But the Lions series is a very different dynamic to a one-off Test at Twickenham. There are different coaching and playing personnel. And, of course, there's no Eddie.

He's been a miracle worker for England. You look at the team and it is not that different to the side that crashed out of the World Cup. You look at some of their recent performances and they have been far from impressive. And yet they keep finding a way to win. A lot of that comes down to executing your skills under pressure in the final 10 minutes of a game. To sum it up in one word: trust.

In those last few moments, when a match is in the balance and a single mistake could cost you the game, you need to trust your the guys either side of you. If you don't then you tend to make bad choices. That's where England have been so good. That match against Wales was a brilliant contest but the try that won it was a case of the backs working in perfect harmony. Every pass and every run had to be perfect and it was.

The other great advantage that England have over most other teams is the strength of their replacements bench. That is what New Zealand have been masters of for years. When the All Blacks replacements come on they raise the bar and kill the game. That's what England are doing now. When you can bring the Vunipola brothers on as replacements that is serious, heavy artillery.

Not everything England have done has been so impressive. They were outsmarted by Italy in the first half and I thought it was poor that Eddie was so ungracious about that. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge that you have been taught a lesson.

Until the Scotland game, they had also been sloppy in patches and almost stumbling along. I was hugely disappointed by Scotland in that match. For the first Jonathan Joseph try, the Scottish centre does not lay a finger on him in what is a one-on-one tackle. I know he is quick but he's not that quick. Then it is game over and England really turned it on.

Ireland will be a tougher test even if they got found out slightly against Wales. All the big Irish ball-carriers were chopped down by Sam Warburton and the rest of the Welsh forwards. They'll have a 16th man on their side with it being St Patrick's weekend, but I'd still fancy England to win.

I just wonder whether part of Eddie secretly wants the run to end. You learn a lot more about your side and their character in defeat than you do in victory. There will be times when England think they are better than what they are.

That's what happened to New Zealand at the 2007 World Cup. They played sensational rugby coming into the tournament but it went to their heads.

They were quoted saying that they didn't need to practise drop goals. Then in the quarter-final against France they lost because, among other things, they couldn't drop a goal.

That's the complacency Eddie will be fighting, but sometimes you can only learn those lessons with the pain of a defeat.