NRL 2022: Which NRL club will be brave enough to sign Eddie Jones as coach, Paul Kent

Eddie Jones has long been fascinated with coaching Rugby League, and all he needs now is an NRL club brave enough to give him a job, writes Paul Kent.

Eddie Jones is convinced he can successfully coach in the NRL. Art by Boo Bailey.

The curiosity in Eddie Jones has him considering a career switch to rugby league.

Jones is convinced he can successfully coach in the NRL, in doing so revealing a man content to bleed for a living.

Jones is 62 and, clearly, a flame still burns.

All he needs now is an NRL club brave enough to give him the job, which could be a more considerable obstacle to overcome than actually coaching.

His appointment would be the last breakdown in the war between the codes.

For years rugby union players have gone across to rugby league and in more recent times rugby league players have been going back to rugby as rugby union coaches.

John Muggleton was a Wallabies defensive coach, with great success, Les Kiss currently coaches London Irish in the Gallagher’s Premiership after stints with the Irish and South African national teams.

Phil Blake is about to start as an assistant for the Queensland Reds.

Then just a few days ago former England coach Clive Woodward took a small break from dancing on Jones’s reputation to urge the Rugby Football Union to appoint former Leeds Rhinos legend Kevin Sinfield, currently working for Leicester, to the national team.

This comes after former NSW captain Laurie Daley said this week he can see the women taking NRL assistant coaching roles in the near future and it was a matter of time before a woman becomes the head coach at an NRL club.

Barriers are falling, and the greatest of all might be the appointment of a man, grounded in rugby union, as the head coach in the NRL.

Which NRL club will be brave enough to take a punt on Eddie Jones? Picture: AFP.

Of course, some thunder has already been stolen from Jones after former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika coached Lebanon and Argentina in England last month.

At one point last month Cheika coached two games in two codes across three days.

One of those games was Lebanon’s quarter-final in the Rugby League World Cup against the Kangaroos.

The other, an Argentinian victory over England in the rugby, was basically the end for Jones.

Jones has gone quiet in England after getting sacked this week. He is somewhere licking wounds and plotting.

A man who never stands still, Jones was considered too demanding to get even nine more months out of England heading into the World Cup, and so he was sacked.

Already suitors from around the world are calling him.

But he has a secret desire to coach in the NRL, and Souths in particular.

Before the Argentina Test Jones flew to northern England to spend a day in camp with Cheika.

Already one NRL club chairman has had the idea of appointing Jones put to him. He liked it enough to nod and put in his pocket for when the club might be looking for a coach.

Jones is convinced he can successfully coach in the NRL. Art by Boo Bailey.

Jones’s curiosity for the NRL found new levels almost 20 years ago when the then Australian Rugby Union was working hard to recruit Andrew Johns.

Johns has since admitted he was on the verge of signing.

Initially Jones wanted nothing to do with it.

He thought it was a stunt.

ARU boss John O’Neill had to convince Jones he was serious and insisted he meet with Johns.

Soon after, Jones walked out of that meeting convinced Johns would change the way rugby was played.

Johns took everything rugby was doing and turned it upside down. From memory, Johns went in asking questions that were direct and intelligent, which impressed Jones immediately.

Jones began explaining the Wallabies’ intent, how they worked on spreading the defence to stretch the gaps between defenders.

Johns said the Knights were doing the opposite in the NRL, which intrigued Jones.

Their approach, Johns said, was to condense the defence with plays around the ruck to create space out wide so the quality ballrunners like Matt Gidley could have enough space to go at the defender one-on-one.

The more Johns spoke, breaking down Wallaby plays and asking Jones why, and offering alternative solutions, the more Jones believed he was going to be something else in the 15-man game.

He came out urging O’Neill to pay whatever it took, and they almost got him.

It also awakened a curiosity in rugby league for Jones and a belief he could one day coach in the NRL.

As absurd as it sounds, he has the tools.

Michael Cheika coached Lebanon at the Rugby League World Cup, and Argentina at the same time. Picture: Getty Images.

Jones is good under pressure. For nearly seven years now he has easily dealt with the British tabloids and the only time he ever really raged was when a boofhead Aussie called him a traitor after they beat the Wallabies.

Before that he coached the Wallabies, doing it easy.

He has always been smart enough to employ smart, talented people to his staff.

He knows enough about the game now to go into any NRL coaching job with some naivety, enough to listen to others, something more than a few rookie NRL coaches can’t be accused of.

The trick would be to find the right club, most likely one reasonably settled with the players’ football IQ is already high.

The rest is shelling peas.

Over time, coaching has become more homogenised. What works in this game works in that game as much of the job has become about player management.

All coaches borrow from each other. Airplane carpets are worn thin with the foot traffic of NRL coaches heading to America to sit by the knee of NFL coaches.

Socceroos coach Graham Arnold speaks regularly with Wayne Bennett and often trades ideas with Jeff Fenech, now training his own stable.

For the modern coach, the game has become about athlete preparation.

Bennett, perhaps, is the master.

It could be argued with some strength that Bennett has never been the most tactical coach in the game, but what he has done better than anybody is the management of players.

All that other stuff, he can hire guys for that.

At South Sydney he had Jason Demetriou drawing up game plans and sitting through hours of video review while he walked around cracking dad jokes and making sure Latrell Mitchell was smiling.

Rule No 1: Keep the players happy.

Specialist defensive and attacking coaches, strength and conditioning guys, if a head coach is smart enough to hire the right people there, then half the job is done.

The rest Jones has already shown he can do.

He just has to convince a club he can do it.

SHORT SHOT

It is hard to know what the bombshell was in James Erskine’s “bombshell allegations” that Australia’s cricketers were given the green light to ball tamper some 16 months before they were officially caught.

The Aussies were so flagrant when they finally got caught their South African rivals were in with binoculars and watching them do it. They pointed it out to the broadcasters so their cameramen could train their cameras on it.

Ball tamperers the world over - where it is treated far less harshly than here in Australia - have often spoken about how easy it is to pick a ball that has been tampered either by its appearance or how it behaves.

Surely the rest of the team, as Erskine asserts, had some idea.

But Cricket Australia wanted to keep it confined to three men, who all suffered greatly.

Ball tampering is treated much less harshly around the world than here in Australia, writes Paul Kent.

One of those men, David Warner, knocked back an independent review this week into his future leadership prospects because, for all the absurdity of their independence, he knew it would be a kangaroo court.

And Erskine felt compelled to defend him.

So we continue to go through this charade, confining the damage to just a few.

Just this week England captain Joe Root rubbed the ball on spinner Jack Leach’s head during the Test victory over Pakistan.

It was an unusual way to polish the ball.

England has previously admitted to using illegal sweets to help shine the ball when they beat Australia in an Ashes series.

Was there suncream on Leach’s head?

He wears a cap but he also takes it off to bowl and, after a day in the hot sun, some suncream on top of his head wouldn’t seem unusual.

What effect would that have on the ball?

Originally published as NRL 2022: Which NRL club will be brave enough to sign Eddie Jones as coach, Paul Kent