WARREN Gatland says Wales haven’t taken offence by Eddie Jones’ controversial comments – and believes England should be more concerned with avoiding a lengthy losing streak.

Jones was forced to apologise on Wednesday night after footage emerged of the Australian referring to the newly-crowned champions as the “scummy Irish” and Wales as a “little s*** country” during a talk on leadership given last year.

It has heaped further pressure on the England boss after losses to Scotland and France, with the Irish heading to London in the middle fixture on Super Saturday.

“Eddie makes a few comments and stuff, it is not offensive to us,” said Gatland. “Those sort of things happen in discussions so I will let Eddie take care of that in his own press conference.”

When asked about whether the incident would harm Jones’ chances of succeeding Gatland to lead the British and Irish Lions in South Africa, the New Zealander responded: “We all say things behind closed door and stuff, talking about ourselves and other nations.

“I have said on a couple of occasions, if he gets the opportunity he will do a good job (with the Lions).

“The pressure for England isn’t about the comments, the pressure for England is on winning on Saturday. That is the pressure they are under because they have to win on Saturday.

“That’s how important the game is to them because potentially if they lose against Ireland then they have three games against South Africa. They could go from a losing streak from two to six pretty quickly. They have got their own things to sort out.”

On Wednesday the Rugby Football Union released a statement in which Jones said: “I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused - no excuses and I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m very sorry.”

Speaking publicly on the matter for the first time at England’s team announcement press conference on Thursday, Jones refused to expand on his remarks beyond issuing a further apology.

“I’d just like to say I’ve apologised for the remarks. I sincerely mean that,” said Jones, who has rung the changes for England’s Twickenham date with Ireland.

“I really don’t have anything else to say on the matter. I ‘m happy to obviously answer questions on a fantastic game that’s coming up but I think the other matter is dead.

“I’ve made the statement, I don’t need to say anything else on it. I think I’ve made every statement that I need to make on it.”

Jones insisted the comments will have little influence on the desire of Joe Schmidt’s men to complete only the third tournament clean sweep in their history.

“Ireland are preparing for a Grand Slam, they don’t need any extra motivation,” Jones said.

Asked if he will reconsider giving similar talks in future, Jones replied: “Ah, possibly, yeah. It’s something I’ll reconsider after the game, the only thing I am worried about at the moment is the game.”

The video, which has seen been taken down from YouTube, shows Jones addressing an audience on behalf of Fuso, who are linked to England sponsors Mitsubishi. It was uploaded by Fuso in July last year but only came to light on Wednesday.