Eddie’s arrived and everything has changed

It’s a mere 252 days after the Wallabies beat England in the World Cup but everything has changed — starting with Eddie Jones.

The Wallabies come together at Suncorp Stadium yesterday. Picture: Stuart Walmsley

Australian tighthead prop Greg Holmes remembers the match as the high point of the Wallabies World Cup campaign, October 3, 2015, the night they inflicted their greatest defeat on England on English soil in 106 years. It was, he said, a night when everything fell into place and an almost faultless display ended perfectly for Australia when Adam Ashley-Cooper drew the last defender and sent Matt Giteau on a triumphant 30-metre sprint to the line to seal the victory 33-13. How fresh in the mind those memories remain. Yet here we are now, June 11, 2016 — a mere 252 days later — and everything has changed.

Stuart Lancaster is no longer coach of England, Chris Robshaw no longer captain. Sam Burgess is still the official scapegoat for all that went wrong in the World Cup though he only played 15 minutes that night. At least he now is a whole hemisphere removed from all that nonsense, though he is now copping a whole new set of grief for his poor handling in the NRL.

As for the team itself, there have been so many changes it’s easier instead to list the survivors: Dan Cole and Robshaw in the forwards, Owen Farrell, Jonathan Joseph, Anthony Watson and Mike Brown in the backs. Eddie Jones, no one needs to be told, is the new England coach, Dylan Hartley, who improbably has spent 54 weeks of his career on suspension — his sixth ban last year costing him his place in the World Cup side — is now the captain and setter of standards. Some have suggested it would have been a very different World Cup indeed for England had Hartley not been stood down by Lancaster. As for the position of scapegoat, it remains unfilled — for the moment.

Yet even for Australia, which underwent none of that turmoil, things too have changed. France-based Wallabies Giteau, Drew Mitchell, Ashley-Cooper and Will Genia have not been invited back by coach Michael Cheika to be part of this campaign, Sekope Kepu has come home, but to a “finishers” role, while Kane Douglas is still making his way back from that knee injury he suffered in the World Cup final.

This isn’t the team Cheika expected to pick for tonight’s first Test against England at Suncorp Stadium. Even entering camp on Sunday of last week, Cheika had an entirely different XV in mind. But then lock Rory Arnold and centre Samu Kerevi kept doing things that persuaded him that their Super Rugby form was a true representation of what they could do, even at Test level.

Cheika doesn’t sit down and formally pick a team they way Wallabies coaches have always done. It kind of coalesces in his mind over time. All he knows is that nine players are missing just from the World Cup back division and no one has even noted their absence. As for the team, it’s better than the one he had been anticipating.

One thing does remain unchanged from October 3. The referee. Romaine Poite of France, a tyrant of poor scrummaging technique. Australia dreaded his appointment to the World Cup match but, as it happened, it was England that suffered under him, conceding six of their nine penalties at the scrum. But that is no guarantee of how he will view the set pieces tonight. It is Cheika’s constant refrain that respect has to be earned one match at a time and Monsieur Poite is surely a demanding critic.

Jones portrays England as the bright, young novice, eager to learn at the feet of the second best team in the world. Don’t believe him for a moment. Even as Hartley was raising the Six Nations trophy above his head, Jones was plotting what needed to be done to win in Brisbane.

He well knows if England can’t win this one, they might struggle in the remaining two Tests. England have had six Tests since the World Cup, Australia none and Cheika well remembers the first Test of last season, where the ring-rusty Wallabies only came good against South Africa so late in the second half that the man of the match judges were “advised to reconsider” their vote — Francois Louw — to reflect the fact that Tevita Kuridrani had scored right on fulltime to win the match.