England Australia showdown: Coaches joust over refereeing

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika claims England prop Dan Cole has been illegally scrummaging his whole career.

Australia coach Michael Cheika is battling with England coach Eddie Jones over who can best influence the referees ahead of this weekend’s big match.

As tensions build ahead of this weekend’s England-Australia grudge match at Twickenham, Wallabies coach Michael Cheika has made the extraordinary claims that England prop Dan Cole has been scrummaging ­illegally his whole career and rival coach Eddie Jones is “running the IRB”.

The animosity between the two camps reached a crescendo when Cheika went on the front foot to accuse 71-Test veteran Cole of dodgy scrum tactics the day after Jones had said he’d hold a meeting with referee Jaco Peyper about Australia’s scrum methods.

Cheika said of Jones: “He’s been having a crack and wants to talk about our scrum because we’re ‘cheating’ in the scrum.

“I think the important thing there to note is that he’s got to be looking at his own players because they’re the ones who have got the penalty try against them, and a prop (Cole) with a yellow card, and that same prop’s been infringing the law since his ­career started probably, if not all of this year.

“If (Jones) thinks that the refs are that naive to take the strategy ‘Well, if he has a go at our scrum, they’ll forget about his guy’, well that’s up to the ref. That’s not up to me.

“Nothing I can say can make a difference about that. It’s up to the ref whether he gets influenced by that, really, after the guy’s been boring in and falling down all of June in the series that we played against them and that’s his tactic, and if he thinks that me saying something back about that is going to change the referee’s mind, well that’s totally up to the ref.

“I don’t think the ref should be influenced like that anyway.”

Cheika said his side always scrummed straight, and tighthead Cole bored in illegally from the side on looseheads Scott Sio and James Slipper throughout the 3-0 series loss to England in June. “We scrum square, we’ve got an Argentinian scrum coach (Mario Ledesma) and all we do is scrum square and try to get as much weight as possible,” ­Cheika said.

“It’s very obvious from the clips. If you wanted to watch them instead of all the vitriol that goes around, if you really look at the clips properly, they’ll tell you the story.

“In the summer, what happened to Scotty and James — Cole’s experience in that way and turning in and pulling down just got the better of them and they weren’t able to deal with it.

“We still scrum the same way and do the same things we do. It’ll be up to the referee as to who he believes.

“If he wants to be influenced by the other chap that we’re the ones scrumming illegally, then they’re the guys that had the penalty try and the yellow card against them.”

Jones said he’d invite Cheika along to his meeting with Peyper, which prompted the Wallabies coach to reveal that Jones had stormed out of a similar meeting in June. He claimed Jones had undue influence over World Rugby (formerly the IRB).

Cheika said he would be in ­attendance if Jones met Peyper before the Test.

“How could I refuse an invitation from the great man? He’s running the IRB now, he’s ­organising the meetings for the refs and for Australian teams and everything like that,” Cheika said.

“It’s funny how your tune changes because in the summer when we asked for those meetings, he was blowing up, he stormed out of one (with Wallabies assistants Stephen Larkham and Nathan Grey).”