Eddie Jones takes aim at ARU’s self-imposed ‘Giteau Law’
New Wallabies coach Eddie Jones is a fierce competitor, so no surprise to hear him take aim at an archaic ‘law’ that holds the Wallabies back.
Eddie Jones says Peter V’landys has been spending “too much time in the TAB” and plans to make rugby so attractive that even the NRL boss will be tuning into his press conferences.
The new Wallabies coach held his first expansive press conferences with Australian media over Zoom on Thursday, and rejected V’landys’ claim that rugby was so boring, the NRL’s best players wouldn’t be interested in switching codes.
“I think he’s been probably sitting in TAB too much, I encourage him to get out of the TAB and go and watch some Super Rugby, I’ll invite him to a game,” Jones said.
V’Landys had shown little concern that Jones wants to poach NRL players to union, saying this week that players “can take their mobile phone with them on the field because they’ve got 30 minutes to tweet, Instagram or TikTok”.
“We wish Eddie the best of luck, and I hope he’s got his mobile phone with him so he can fill that 30 minutes as well,” V’landys told AAP.
But Jones was defiant that he could sway some of the NRL’s top talent, and V’landys himself.
“If we can play some good rugby, people will want to watch us play. And if we win, then we’ll be in a better position in the media, so this 15 people we’ve got now [on the Zoom call] will be 30 people, because all the rugby league journalists want to be part of it,” Jones said.
“We might even get, what’s his name, the horse guy to a media conference. V’landys.
“So the task is relatively simple, but the process is the difficult part. Everyone knows what we want to do, I’ve heard guys who I’ve coached, they tell me their sons don’t watch rugby anymore.
“That happens when you’re not connected with your fans, and part of that is the winning process and part of that is how we conduct ourselves.
“There’s a clear message; we’ve got to try to become a team of the rugby community, and that’s hard in the professional era where you need to have good training camps, and you can’t spend the amount of time in the public as you used to.
“But we’re going to have to find a way to do that, it’s maybe a slight change in direction in how the team operates, having good training camps but also spending time at a school, at a local rugby club, doing some training in that environment so the young kids see their stars, and they have a conversation with a Tate McDermott or [Len] Ikitau, or Jed Holloway or James Slipper, and that conversation they have will make them want to play rugby.”
Jones, who has signed to be Wallabies coach until the end of 2027, said it was unlikely he’d sign an NRL player for this year’s World Cup, starting September in France, but will certainly be on the lookout from 2024 onwards.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said we need to poach players before September, I said there’s a priority in what we need to do in relation to rugby league,” Jones said.
“In the Australian rugby landscape, rugby league is a pretty intense competitor, and they compete for the fans, they compete for television money, they compete for the players.
“In the short term, and we’re talking about the World Cup now, it’s highly unlikely any players are going to come from rugby league, because they’re all on contracts, they’ve all started pre-season training with their clubs, it’s highly unlikely they’re going to jump.
“But going forward I think there’s a big responsibility for rugby in Australia to make sure we retain the talented kids that are playing rugby. In the various competitions, GPS, CHS, CAS, there are a lot of kids playing rugby, we’ve got to make sure we retain that talent.
“And that’s firstly about the players with the potential to play for Australia, and encouraging them to stay in rugby where the financial rewards in the short-term (in league) might be greater than what we can offer, but the memories and the opportunities rugby can create with the World Cup – 2023 has probably flown now – but the 2025 Lions, 2027 World Cup, rugby league can’t offer that.
“We’ve got some advantages there, and therefore we might be able to get some of the players who’ve left to play rugby league and wearing different colours, and get them in better colours.
“And the third step is, I think the chairman [Hamish McLennan] is pretty keen on pinching a few from the other side, so we’ll see how we go.”
Eddie Jones has addressed a number of pressing issues, including the captaincy of the team, the assistant coaches, Quade Cooper, the Giteau Law and his passion for the job.
Here are Jones’ key messages.
James Slipper is captain of the Wallabies, having taken over from Michael Hooper after the flanker took a mental health break. Will Jones change the captain?
“That’s going to be really important,” Jones said. “We need to find a captain who can galvanise the team. Whenever you change coaches or change the team environment, as what’s happened, the captaincy becomes even more important.
“So we need someone who can quickly galvanise the troops (and) work closely with me, because every captain and every coach combination is different. So the right captain for a particular coach is not necessarily the right captain for another coach.
“It’s a bit of appraisal. I have just got to walk the floor initially. Find out about each of the players, meet with them face to face. I have started having some preliminary phone calls, talk to the players and then we will make hopefully an educated decision.”
Will he change the assistant coaches who were part of predecessor Dave Rennie’s team, including Dan McKellar, Laurie Fisher, and scrum coach Petrus du Plessis?
“There’s not uncertainty, I’ve got pretty good ideas,” Jones said. “There’s some fantastic possibilities there but the first thing is to speak to the people who have been in the chair, get an indication of their desire because some of them might want to continue.
“So I’ve got to work out their desire to keep continuing and then I’ll work out what we need. And again it’s more about what the players need, not necessarily what I need, and so the players’ feedback is going to be important in that process.”
Quade Cooper and the five-eighth conundrum, who will Jones choose as his World Cup No. 10?
“With any selection, there’s a number of factors,” Jones said. “One, at Test level in particular, there’s historical form. If you build up good performances over a period of time, obviously you are at the top of the tree.
“Then there is current form, which will be the Super Rugby, which will also be important. In terms of how we want to play, again the way we want to play, the intent of how we want to play is going to be the important thing. Australian rugby has always been at its best when we have been really tough, we fight, we have that real hard edge about us. So we want players who can play like that.
“Ten, that’s more so in the way you think about the game rather than the physical part of the game. And then we need to be a smart team, because in some areas we won’t be as athletically gifted as others so we need to be smart about the game.
“So I am looking for a ten who can play tough in that position, particularly in terms of decision making and be really smart about how he plays the game.
“I was lucky enough to see those two young tens play live when Randwick played Eastwood post the tour, so [Tane] Edmed and [Ben] Donaldson. I have seen both of those guys play for Australia A and saw Donaldson saw in the November Test matches. So they’re both young guys who are coming through.
“You have the experience of [Bernard] Foley, I have just watched him play recently live, he still has a good command of the game. You have the young guy at the Brumbies, Lolesio, who has played a number of Tests. So there is good competition there.
“But again it will be who comes through at Super Rugby that is going to have the first opportunity for Australia. But having said that, and it seems like a contradiction, we are also going to have to decide quite quickly who we think are the best nines and tens and 12s, particularly, to try and build up that cohesion.
“[James O’Connor] is a fantastic utility player. He is a guy who can play in a number of positions, he has matured nicely, and he is another one who could come into the reckoning. We are not short of people there. We just have to find the right fit.”
On Cooper, Jones said: “You’ve got to be available and as it stands when Super Rugby starts, he won’t be [due to an Achilles injury].
“We’d be hopeful he would be and playing in Japan isn’t a concern, only that at the moment there’s the Giteau law and there’s a number of players we can use so we have to be cognisant of that but he’ll be one of the blokes I met. I had a bit of a chat on text with his old mate Will [Genia] the other day because I’ve been watching him playing for the last few weeks.
“It’s good to see those two guys still playing and certainly when Quade came back, he didn’t look out of place and looked a more mature, still gifted in terms of his ball play and decision. He’s got that good short-kicking game that makes him a dangerous player and he certainly added a lot of physicality to his game which as a younger player as they do struggle with a bit.
“The big thing is to get fit and start playing. When he does that, then he comes into recognition. If you look at there’s that group of more experienced players, young guys coming through, guys who have in and out but like most teams, that’s a crucial position so we have to make sure our first or second selections at the role is spot on to what the team needs going back to Benny Darwin, the cohesion of the team so that’s a big decision mate.”
Will he try to change the Giteau Law and make all overseas-based players available in his squad?
“Yeah, well in terms of the Giteau Law at the moment, it is what it is at the moment (three overseas-based players in a squad), that’s certainly something that I’ll discuss a little bit further down the track,” Jones said.
“At the end of the day, we’d like to have our best players available and if some of those best players are playing overseas, we’d like to find a way for them to be available.”
Jones said taking Rennie’s job was an offer he couldn’t refuse, and revealed what it means returning to the post he held 18 years ago.
“Well I don’t think it’s a matter of what I can bring in and what Dave couldn’t,” Jones said.
“There are factors that, as a coach, we don’t control and firstly that’s the opportunity to coach Australia. The big thing for me was that when you get asked to coach your country it’s hard to say ‘no’. And as has been well documented we were speaking about 2024 and then it changed to 2023. So I wasn’t thinking I can do this better than Dave or I’m a better person, it’s not that at all. It’s the fact that there was an opportunity there that as an Australian when you get a chance to coach your country you want to do it.
“You have fleeting things where you think ‘I’d love to go back to Australia’ but I never really sat down and said ‘this is the goal, this is what I want to do’ because coaching is really like that. You have to coach as well as you can and someone then says ‘we’ll give you the opportunity to coach this team’ and you then make a decision if you do it or not.
“I’m obviously honoured and 100% humbled by the opportunity to coach Australia. It’s the stuff dreams are made of to have this opportunity.
“I’m looking forward to it and the only thing I’ve thought about is particularly is Bob Dwyer in his second stint was a much better coach when you go in there when you’re younger and you think you know everything, the second time around you’ve been around the traps a bit and you’ve picked up some experience and maybe you pick up the wind of what’s needed quicker.”
How will he manage the dual roles of Wallabies coach and being in charge of the Wallaroos program?
“The idea clearly is where I can lend my experience to the Wallaroos,” Jones said
“They have their own coaching team and staff so they’ll get on with it. I think there’s an opportunity there at times to watch what they’re doing and add some experience.
“This is not an afterthought, it’s about adding value. The mere fact that Rugby Australia thinks that is important speaks to how seriously they want Australian women’s rugby to dwell and hopefully I add some value along the way.”
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