Eddie Jones should be No 1 priority for Wallabies: John O’Neill
John O’Neill says recruiting Eddie Jones to coach the Wallabies should be a top priority.
Former Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O’Neill believes all other coaching candidates should be viewed as a distant second priority behind recruiting current England mentor Eddie Jones as the next Wallabies coach.
Jones become the hottest rugby coaching property on the planet on Saturday when his England side utterly dominated the All Blacks in the World Cup semi-final, winning 19-7 to force their way into the final. In the process he became the first coach since South African Kitch Christie in 1995 to beat New Zealand and Australia — winner of a combined five World Cups — at the same tournament.
“RA must have a real crack at signing Eddie Jones for four years,” O’Neill told The Australian. “It is a no-brainer at every level. I had Eddie (as Wallabies coach) for only two years, 2002-03.
“Yes, he can be difficult to manage but I sense that his temperament may have mellowed over time and he now is at the peak of his game. The Wallabies and RA are desperate for success. I hear that the Rugby Football Union pays him £1 million ($1.88m) plus bonuses.”
Even if Australia was forced to match or even slightly improve on the English offer, O’Neill is convinced it would be worth it.
“I can tell you that New Zealand would be very worried if we did secure him,” he said. “And his ability to navigate his way through the English Premier clubs and availability challenges would certainly equip him well for Australia’s Super Rugby environment.”
Australia has been informed that Jones’s contract with England is “watertight” through to 2021 and he was eliminated early from the process of selecting a new national team coach on those grounds, an RA spokesperson said on Sunday.
Yet contracts are barely worth the paper they are printed on these days, particularly if Jones was to go to the RFU and suggest that he has done his utmost with the England side and now wants to return to Australia to take on the challenge of the Wallabies.
The Australian-born Jones has now coached four national sides at the World Cup and achieved success with every one of them.
He coached the Wallabies to the extra-time final against England in 2003, was taken on as an assistant coach of the Springboks by Jake White in 2007 when South Africa won the trophy, coached Japan to three pool round victories including an astonishing victory over the Springboks in 2015, and now he has guided England to the 2019 final next weekend.
As former England fly-half and Fox Sports commentator Stuart Barnes observed after the win over New Zealand, Jones had already signed with South African side the Stormers for the 2016 Super Rugby season after finishing his stint with Japan and had boasted he could look out on a view that included Table Mountain every day, so why would he want to go to England? Two months later he was coaching England, said Barnes.
“I don’t know what the figures are but I’m sure he is being well remunerated by the RFU,” Barnes said on Sunday. “But my Australian mates tell me he is very patriotic as well, so I wouldn’t have a clue on that, really.”
Certainly it would be the height of hypocrisy if the RFU criticised RA for attempting to lure Jones back home when it induced him to break his contract with the Stormers.
An RA announcement on the composition of the planned review of the Wallabies’ World Cup campaign has dragged on now into a second week but that could be a sign the organisation is moving towards a process that will be widely accepted by the rugby community.
Initially the plan was for the review to be conducted by RA director of rugby Scott Johnson, chief executive Raelene Castle and a presumably independent person, but that evoked a storm of protest about RA effectively reviewing itself.
However, it is now understood the board has taken charge of the process and is prepared to take its time arriving at a much broader and more transparent review.
An announcement was to have been made on Sunday but now is not expected before Monday at the earliest.
Meanwhile, there is jubilation in the west that Western Force, culled from the Super Rugby competition at the start of 2018, have come through to win the grand final of the National Rugby Championship, beating Canberra Vikings 41-3 at the University of WA Sports Park on Saturday.
In the most one-sided final in the six-year history of the NRC, the Force completely blotted out a Canberra side featuring four Wallabies.
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