England coach Eddie Jones still haunted by Wallabies’ 2003 defeat

Even as he stands on the cusp of one of coaching’s greatest redemptions, Eddie Jones still can’t forget the one that got away.

Eddie Jones leads a practice session with Japanese schoolchildren after the England team’s captain's run on Friday. Picture: AFP

Even as he stands on the cusp of one of coaching’s greatest redemptions, Eddie Jones still can’t forget the one that got away.

Sixteen years later, Jones remains haunted by Australia’s heartbreaking loss to England in the 2003 World Cup final.

Beaten by a Jonny Wilkinson field goal in the last minute of extra time, Jones has never got over that loss and missing out on the chance to redeem himself with his homeland.

Opening up for the first time about the devastating personal impact that defeat had on him, Jones said it took him four years just to even realise he was still depressed and in shock about the result.

“I didn’t realise what an effect it had on me until possibly 2007. You think everything is all right but you lose a World Cup final and it’s a difficult experience,” Jones said.

“I’ve experienced both and I know the difference you feel and if you don’t reflect really well, which I didn’t after the last World Cup, then you carry some things with you that aren’t always positive.

“They can be negative and they have an effect on how you approach your job.”

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Jones was so desperate to make amends that he lost sight of what made him such a great coach in the first place, then he lost his job in 2005.

Crushed by his sacking and the bitter fallout that ensued, Jones has since gone on to establish himself as one of the World Cup’s greatest coaching success stories, but with other countries, not his homeland.

He was an assistant to the South African team that won the World Cup in 2007, then he masterminded the greatest upset in the tournament’s history when Japan beat the Springboks in the pool stages in 2015.

And now he’s taken England to the final in Yokohama, against South Africa.

Should England win, Jones will be revered as a coaching genius and enjoy all the accolades that will come from that, but it will never heal his heartache, even though he acknowledges it was the lessons he learnt from 2003 that have made him the best coach in the world today.

“I think I was just too desperate to win and you can’t be desperate for things. You’ve got to have the will to prepare to win, that’s the difference and it takes time sometimes,” he said.

“After you lose a World Cup you want it to happen like that, because you want to get rid of that memory and it doesn’t happen like that.

“You’ve got to work again and build it up. Sometimes you’re not as patient building it up.

“I think it happens with players as well. If you’ve experienced a significant trauma in your sport, it takes time to get over it.”

Jones may get another chance with the Wallabies now that the job is open again, but his immediate focus is on winning with England.

“Saturday night is the biggest sporting event in the world and our players get to play in that arena,” he said. “They can inspire a whole country now, they can inspire a sporting community. That’s the opportunity they’ve got and all the messages that we’ve seen back in England at the moment is that there’s a bit of a rugby fever going on, so now mums are telling kids, ‘play rugby’.

“It changes how the country feels about itself for a period of time ... it changes how people feel about themselves and that’s the greatest joy.

“If I look back at Japan and look at the growth of rugby in Japan from what we did in 2015, it’s spectacular. People in Japan love rugby now, they didn’t before, they love the game. You’ve got this opportunity to change people’s lives through the ability to play rugby, and it’s a gift, isn’t it?”

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH