‘Rugby is in a fairly dark place’: Eddie Jones on his mission to respark Wallabies, Australian rugby

Wallabies coach Eddie Jones opens up about his England sacking, returning to London to coach the Barbarians, the state of rugby in Australia and true impact of signing Joseph Sua’ali’i.

Wallabies coach Eddie Jones wants to lift the fortunes of both his sport and team. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

Last summer in Australia, Eddie Jones did not seem himself. He was the England head coach, trying to plot a route to winning the World Cup, and back in his homeland where he had led his adopted nation to a spiky, confrontational 3-0 series win in 2016. The “Bodyline tour” he had called it, knowing it would rile the locals.

But this time something was different. There was no fanfare for the 2022 England-Australia series, only a smattering of home journalists following the games as rugby league’s box-office State of Origin event stole the show, and no Ashes-style animosity. He missed the back-and-forth, the mind games with his old mate Michael Cheika, with whom he had sparred verbally six years before.

In Perth and Brisbane, around the first two Tests, Jones was notably subdued. Dave Rennie, the Wallabies head coach, hid the Australians away from the Test towns and made it clear he would not engage in a slanging match.

Eddie Jones and Michael Cheika’s words another layer to the Australia-England rivalry. Picture: Bob Bradford – CameraSport via Getty Images

“In 2016 we had Cheika here and there was a bit of niggle,” Jones said at the time. “It was good Australian sport. This time it feels like … I don’t know what it feels like. I prefer it like that but you can’t spar against nothing. I like a bit of fun. When you’re sparring in a corner by yourself it’s not much fun.”

He was dismayed how rugby union had become so irrelevant since his days as Australia coach in the 2000s, when the Wallabies were dominant and a hot ticket.

Jones did not to know then what would unfold in the following 11 months. In December he was sacked by England, and by January he shocked the world by returning as Australia head coach, the job he left in tears in 2005.

Hamish McLennan, the Rugby Australia chairman, saw the Wallabies free-falling in the court of public appeal behind the big sports such as rugby league’s NRL competition, cricket, Australian Rules and even football.

With Australia hosting the 2025 British & Irish Lions tour and the 2027 World Cup, something needed to change – so he sacked Rennie and hired Fast Eddie, the perfect man to start shouting about Australia again. In Jones he found a kindred spirit, someone to return bums to seats and eyes to rugby union. Being loud and proud about the Wallabies, and picking fights to make a splash, is now all part of Jones’s remit.

“When the opportunity came I jumped at it because rugby is in a fairly dark place and needs a bit of energy, needs a bit of direction,” Jones says now. “I can only do my bit coaching the national team but obviously I can do a job selling the game there, which I have taken on, so I am enjoying it.”

Jones wants to help Australian rugby to return to its golden days. Picture: Dave Rogers/ALLSPORT

He says he feels “like a volunteer” back in Australia, and is calling this short-term project to try to win the World Cup in France the “smash-and-grab” plan. That is a classic Jonesism, and all the old tricks are coming out. He brought a cattle prod to his first Wallabies camp – and made sure photographers were there to see him with it – and angered the most popular and well-funded sport in the country, rugby league.

That started when Rugby Australia signed up an NRL superstar for next year – the 19-year-old Sydney Rooster Joseph Sua’ali’i – on a contract worth ten times his league one, at pounds 850,000 a year. “We definitely bought a rugby league player to get back in the shop window,” Jones admits. “That is 100 per cent true and now people are talking about rugby again.”

All of this is him trying to restore what he thinks is “the Australian way” of playing sport; tough, in-yer-face, chest out. “It is more about intent,” he says. “Australians, in whichever sport they play, are much better when they are aggressive, when they are positive, when they are in the face of the opposition. We are doing it our way and we are at the opposition with numbers at the line in attack and defence like mongrel dogs running around.”

Jones – now back in London to coach the Barbarians against a World XV at Twickenham this Sunday – does not want to admit it but when England sacked him it stung.

Eddie Jones is returning to Twickenham as coach of the Barbarians. Picture: Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images

It was December 6 when he was last at Twickenham. He left through a side door and was whisked away in a black Mercedes. He asked the RFU to say in its statement they had “dismissed” him rather than “parted company”. He quickly went with his wife, Hiroko, to Japan – his “spiritual home” to decompress for three weeks. Then the hunger returned.

“Rugby is more than a job to me, it’s my life,” he says. “So when someone tells you they don’t want you to coach a team, OK, that’s all right – but I want to coach. So then you want to coach a team you can make a difference to.”

Without a “no-compete” clause in his contract, Jones was free to jump immediately to another country. So while the RFU is still paying off the final year of his deal, he is plotting to beat England at the World Cup. Jones insists it is not about revenge. He is just desperate to finally win the tournament as a head coach – the most glaring absence from his CV.

He will use this Barbarians week to study Quade Cooper and Samu Kerevi, his potential Wallaby midfield partnership, at first hand, and is ready to unleash the “enormous” 22-stone La Rochelle lock Will Skelton on the international stage again.

So far Jones has made a lot of noise back home, but not taken charge of a game. His first comes in Pretoria against the world champions, South Africa, on July 8; time enough to instil this new-old philosophy.

“We have been copying other teams and that is not the Australian way,” he says. “We need to work a bit harder and need to create a style of rugby that is quintessentially Australian.”

Originally published as ‘Rugby is in a fairly dark place’: Eddie Jones on his mission to respark Wallabies, Australian rugby