Stuart Barnes: Eddie Jones wants Wallabies to play like England (before he ruined them)
Wallabies head coach Eddie Jones might be making the headlines that he and Rugby Australia crave but it won’t last long unless he starts winning Test matches, writes STUART BARNES.
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“Aren’t you one of the journalists that drove Eddie out of England?” My interrogator said, with a smile, over a beer in one of Bondi Junction’s foremost traditional Australian pubs. The comment was more mischievous than malicious. He wasn’t a stranger; in fact he wasn’t even Australian. Rather, an English friend of my son-in-law.
Mike lives in Sydney. My wife and I were visiting our family. Word travels faster than aeroplanes. And fair enough, it’s a rough old world of give and take - and Jones, who loves to use phrases such as “a bit of mongrel”, knows the game better than anyone after more than two decades in the rugby limelight.
Just to reiterate. Stuart Barnes - or Stephen Jones or Owen Slot - had no part in Eddie Jones’s exit. England’s failings in consecutive Six Nations, and their failure to find a style to lift them from their mire and a clueless defeat at the hands of Argentina - their first-up and seriously threatening World Cup opponents - at Twickenham, did for Jones as a similar defeat by the Pumas had done for a previous England head coach, Andy Robinson.
At the time of his dismissal, it seemed staggering that he was not contractually obliged to take gardening leave from coaching, as is the case with his predecessor with Australia, Dave Rennie. After all, Jones is the master at getting teams prepared in the short term, the man with the plan, not to mention knowledge of the English team and its new head coach Steve Borthwick, his former No 2. And the possibility of a quarter-final clash between those two sides is far from fanciful.
Australia took advantage of his immediate availability and recalled Jones. The stuff of headlines. And Jones delivered. There’s not a coach in the world with his feel for making news. His appointment for a second stint as Wallabies head coach (he coached them to the final and defeat by England in 2003) lifted rugby union from its status as a second-tier sport in Australia. League is the code at which they excel. Commentators brag that the State of Origin series between Queensland and New South Wales is where the world’s elite meet. And they have a point.
Union desperately needs a profile to keep the sport competitive. Aussie rules is making a concerted bid among the schools of Sydney to allure teenage talent to Australia’s very own exclusive sport. And then there is the Ashes, with the crowing locals - all good natured - especially enjoying the early days of the series. Throw the Australia and New Zealand-hosted Fifa Women’s World Cup into the bargain and any rugby union coach would find it difficult to be seen, heard or read. The Aussies are waltzing to the tune of their Matildas, although Nigeria toned down the party on Thursday.
Jones gave the game an expected media jolt with his return but if the appointment is to be an inspired move, Australia have to become headlines on, as well as off, the field.
In Jones’s first game in charge, a largely second-string South African side were able to beat the Wallabies with ease in Pretoria. Words were exchanged - a la Eddie - before and after the match.
Look online; try to read the description of the match. The lingering headlines surround an irate Eddie asking a journalist not to put words in his mouth. Knockabout nonsense to keep him in the headlines as Australia started their Rugby Championship campaign - and preparation for the World Cup - falteringly. Worse was to follow as Jones’s recent nemesis, Argentina, and his former Randwick team-mate and Australia coach, Michael Cheika, beat Jones on home turf yet again.
It should be stated that the Wallabies captain, Michael Hooper, was injured but the recalled second-row combination of Will Skelton and Rory Arnold, from La Rochelle and Toulouse, more than balanced the con with the pros.
Jones wants the Wallabies to play it less structured - the old Australian way on the gainline. The ironies are overwhelming. Here is the man who stripped England’s players of their decision-making powers and turned them into a low-risk team of automatons. Now he says that he wants to turn an overly structured Australian side - in his opinion - into an England he all but obliterated with his omnipotent coaching style.
Tomorrow (Saturday), his team meet what appears to be a resurgent New Zealand, again in Australia. Defeat would leave the Wallabies marooned at the foot of the Rugby Championship; no wins from three matches to go with England’s four from ten in his final two Six Nations in charge. It’s pre-World Cup but this is pressure.
Four wins from 13 tournament Test matches with teams as prominent as England and Australia would be a risible record. You can talk your way through as many press conferences as you like but the win/loss ratio speaks for itself. Infinitely more than the opinion of doubting journalists.
After this game, Australia have one - non-Championship - match before travelling to France for the World Cup. That fixture is away to New Zealand. It could be four consecutive defeats, with messages so mixed that former internationals such as Drew Mitchell are openly questioning his strategy. You wonder whether it was perhaps a moment of Trojan horse genius on the part of the RFU to hand Jones over to potential quarter-final opponents.
The man with the quickest of wits, famed for his fixes, is on the edge of an abyss. Australian players must give themselves and their fans something to believe in tomorrow (Saturday). The idea behind Eddie’s reappointment was not to travel to Europe with shredded squad confidence and utter disinterest on the part of their sporting public.
In the end, the results don’t lie.
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Originally published as Stuart Barnes: Eddie Jones wants Wallabies to play like England (before he ruined them)