Job seeker: Eddie Jones hunts new gig

Eddie Jones is confident he will be working by January as he confirms several countries have made contact.

Eddie Jones says he will be back in work by January Picture: Getty Images

Former Wallabies coach Eddie Jones has confirmed he is speaking to “several” countries as he considers his next job but has not been formally approached by, or spoken to, Japan Rugby Football Union.

Jones, who again repeated he did not interview with Japan during Australia’s failed World Cup campaign, said taking a young Wallabies squad to the World Cup in France was proof he had a long-term ambition to coach the team.

He reiterated what stopped him from staying was Rugby Australia’s inability to centralise the high performance system. But he hopes to pick up another job by January.

“Obviously I want to coach,” Jones told The Australian.

“I’m looking for a job now. If Japan did come knocking I’d definitely chat to them and I’ve had a couple of other countries approach me. There’s a club in Europe interested so I would expect by January I’ll be working again.

“(My stint with) Australia has been a massive disappointment for me – and all this stuff about Japan like, why would I take the youngest squad to the World Cup? So we had the youngest team in the World Cup, right, why would I do that? Why would I do that if I had no intention of staying on? I am not an idiot – I had the intention of staying on. For the plan that I had, it then had to have the (high performance) system change in place otherwise we are going to have more of the same.”

For decades Jones has had deep ties to Japanese rugby, coaching them from 2012-15, and has a longstanding and close friendship with Japan’s rugby president Masato Tsuchida.

He confirmed if Japan approached him formally, he would be keen.

“I’ve had no formal talks with them (Japan), everyone knows that discussions take place, like I’ve had a discussion this morning with the club, and that doesn’t mean I’m taking the job and well, that doesn’t mean I’m being disloyal to what I’m doing now,” Jones said.

“Because there’s agents in the world that are continually ringing up. They make money by connecting people. I haven’t done anything formal. I haven’t done anything untoward at all or had a formal approach in Japan … nothing’s changed in that regard.

“I’m looking for a job now, like I’m unemployed now. So yeah, I need to look for a job and if that’s a sin … then that’s a terrible thing I am doing.”

Jones, 63, believes he is a better coach than this time last year, despite a disastrous World Cup campaign with the Wallabies.

“As long as I’ve got the energy to do it, I’ll keep doing it (coaching),” he said. “But as you know, in terms of experience and learning, the older you get, the better the coach you are. I am a much better coach than I was this time last year. I’ve learnt a lot from Australia. I’ve learned some things I shouldn’t have done, some things I didn’t do well and I’ll be a better coach in the next job that I do.”

Jones has said it is key that Rugby Australia centralise to progress but he is unsurprised that some stakeholders – Queensland and the ACT – are opposed to wholesale reform.

“I think everyone agrees there needs to be change but at the moment the totality of Australian rugby can’t find a way to make change,” he said.

“I give you an example of South Africa, in 2015, they get beaten by Japan. So they are rock bottom.

“They know they have a lot to change because the system they’ve got isn’t working. So what they do is they encourage their players to play overseas.

“They rejig their provinces at home and then they move their whole domestic competition to the northern hemisphere and what’s happened is that they’ve won two World Cups since.

“Australia is a small but great rugby country, we’ve won two World Cups. To think that we can keep doing what we’re doing and that we’ve only got the coaches to blame for it, it’s just foolhardiness. I think everyone understands that but at the moment, there’s not a political way forward and there’s not a financial way to get forward.”

Jones points to the modernisation of cricket, via Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, and rugby league’s Super League war as a key to the transformation of those sports.

He said Australian rugby needed a radical transformation.

“The Australian Rugby Union (Rugby Australia) is a federal system, so the states have the power and the national body can change things … if they’ve got money,” he said.

“The other thing I was reminded of when I was back was that two of our most successful sports are cricket and rugby league. And if you look at those sports, they were changed by a media empire coming in and basically buying squads, changing the way the administration thought and set the sports on a new pathway.

“When Super League happened everyone was forecasting the death of the sport – they were saying the sport is stuffed, it’s not going forward – and look at the NRL now. It’s one of the most vibrant domestic competitions in the world.

“And the same with cricket – everyone was decrying ‘oh the Sheffield Shield’s dead we can’t go on’ … but now cricket’s never been so healthy. Success leaves clues … we know (Australian rugby) they want to change and there’s got to be some way to get a collective will and most of the time it takes money.”

Jones, when he was back in Australia, was also struck by the way that the nation’s Super Rugby teams had all but disappeared from the public consciousness and conversation.

He pointed then to Stan Sport not being shown in pubs.

“Domestic rugby in Australia needs to be entertaining, because people only watch it if it is entertaining. If you go back to Super Rugby, Super 12s, it was the best against the best … and a lot of my mates who are mostly rugby league guys used to watch Super Rugby but they don’t watch it now,” he said.

“They don’t even know about it … unfortunately being on Stan makes it even worse because no one sees it, no one can go to a pub on a Friday night or a Saturday night and watch rugby.”