You couldn’t make it up really. Rugby is not known for hiring and sacking, but the panic less than a year out from the Rugby World Cup which gripped the WRU and RFU has extended to Rugby Australia, meaning that just six weeks after sacking him, Eddie Jones looms large on England’s horizon.
Only time will tell if the RFU over-reacted to England’s underwhelming year by removing Jones and replacing him with Steve Borthwick. There’s little doubt that Jones’s methods and personality led to an extraordinarily high turnover in back room personnel, yet he had the highest win ratio (73 per cent) of any English head coach in the professional era.
He also guided them to three Six Nations titles and the final of the last World Cup, a competition in which he has a proven record with four countries.
But by sacking Jones and not inserting a ‘gardening leave’ clause in his contractual settlement, the RFU ensured Jones became immediately available. Cue his appointment on Monday as the new Wallabies head coach on a five-year deal.
Come the World Cup, there is the intriguing possibility of Jones coaching the Wallabies against England in Marseilles on October 14th or 15th.
If so, aside from being hugely motivated, Jones will also bring seven years of IQ from his time with the English team. Were he to exact revenge, the RFU will be made to look very foolish.
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Doubtless, the boos which rang out after being bullied into submission by South Africa in November were a factor. That defeat completed, statistically, England’s worst calendar year since 2008, with five wins, and a draw against the All Blacks, in 12 games.
England did win a series in his native Australia, but overall Jones probably didn’t help himself with constant references toward building to the 2023 World Cup and downplaying the importance of everything beforehand, including the Six Nations. That’s not what the hamper set want to hear after packing out at Twickenham at great expense. Cue the boos.
Failing an England-Australia quarter-final, it could be that Jones’ Wallabies will come against another Aussie in Michael Cheika’s Pumas. With Warren Gatland and Jones now set to revive their enmity in the pool stages anyway, that half of the draw will be enlivened by three wily coaching heavyweights who are not shy of a barbed exchange or two via their press conferences.
For the time being, Jones appointment as Wallabies’ head coach appears to have been popularly received in his native land. Unlike the Kiwi he replaced, Dave Rennie, the eminently quotable Jones speaks their language. In a country where rugby struggles in the large shadow of Aussie Rules and Rugby League, Jones will be a boost.
Amid the excitement in Australia, Rennie’s tenure has been given short shrift beyond mention of his 38 per cent win ratio – the worst of any Wallabies head coach in the pro era.
Yet Rugby Australia’s decision to have a fifth match on their end-of-year tour, out of financial need, ensured they played more Tests (14) than any other country in 2022, and left Rennie with little choice but to rotate heavily for the third of those five end-of-year games against Italy.
Denied a win over the All Blacks by Mathieu Raynal’s contentious decision to penalise Bernard Foley for time wasting, the Wallabies came within one virtuoso late Damien Penaud try of beating France in Paris and a missed kick of beating Italy; they ran Ireland desperately close and, despite a worsening injury list the length of Rennie’s arm, a week later they overturned a 21-point deficit to beat Wales.
Attending Wallabies press conferences that week, it was striking to witness the undiluted support for Rennie among the coaches and players. When Nic White said after the Ireland game that they were 100 per cent behind Rennie, he meant it and that win over Wales proved it. Well, now they have Jones, under whom it will be his way or the highway.
While he can be amusing and is undoubtedly very smart, there has often been something dislikable about Jones’ usually smug, and sometimes curt, comments, which can be dripping with sarcasm and/or disrespect opponents.
Most objectionable in the game’s current climate has been the way Jones has resorted to prematch talk of physically bullying and intimidating opposition, the prime example being that “France can expect absolute brutality from England”. Does rugby need that trash talk?
In delivering a talk on leadership for truck and bus manufacturer Fuso in July 2017, Jones declared: “We’ve played 23 Tests and we’ve only lost one Test to the scummy Irish.” In the same talk, he described Wales as “this little s**t place that has got three million people”.
He did subsequently apologise for the “scummy Irish” comment but didn’t after comments before the Ireland-England Six Nations regarding Johnny Sexton.
“They’ve talked about him having whiplash injury which is not a great thing to talk about. I’m sure his mother and father would be worried about that. Hopefully, the lad’s all right on Saturday to play,” said Jones, without a hint of sincerity.
One could go on and on, and there have been funny, less objectionable comments too, but particularly grating was his sarcastic comment before the England-Ireland Autumn Nations Cup game in 2020: “I heard someone calling them the United Nations, so I had a little chuckle.”
This was particularly ironic given England have never been shy themselves of picking non-English born players (no less than anyone else) and that given that he was born in Australia to a Japanese mother, and is married to a Japanese woman, you’d have thought Jones would be more inclined to embrace multiculturism. Embracing the Wallabies’ diversity is something that Cheika encouraged in his time as their head coach, and presumably Jones will henceforth do the same.
Jones’s appointment may well, in the short-term anyway, give the Wallabies and rugby in Australia a boost. Either way, he will soon be centre stage again and, come the World Cup, will be hogging the limelight – a place where he seems eminently content with himself.
– The Dublin Neurological Institute is hosting a ‘Resilient Leadership’ event with guest speakers Stuart Lancster and Jim Gavin at Croke Park on Tuesday, February 7th. For those interested in purchasing a table or individual tickets, call 01-8545033 or email fundraising@dni.ie
