Jones will get Australians firing again, then it will blow up like it always does

Australia can expect a bounce, and the looming World Cup suddenly has some glorious new plot lines, then it will blow up like it always does with Eddie Jones.

New Wallabies coach Eddie Jones. Picture: Getty Images

Really, this is all just too good to be true. The World Cup can’t come quickly enough.

Can we please fast-forward through the Six Nations and get to the good bits. There’s a quarter-final weekend in Marseille pending in October that beats any soap opera anywhere. It may be Eddie Jones versus England. And if it’s not that, it’s marginally more likely to be Eddie’s Aussies versus Argentina – which is Eddie versus his greatest old sparring partner, Michael Cheika. And Warren Gatland is likely to be in Marseille too. That’s Gatland’s Wales, by the way.

OK, yes, there’ll be some rugby players there in Marseille too, but when did a sport ever find itself with such an A-list line-up of spiky old heavyweight coaches sniffing legacy, dominance and last blood like this? Talk of cult of personality. It’s Ali-Frazier III, but with a deeper cast, a richer, more compelling narrative and this brilliant, riveting revenge theme.

Jones: You were wrong to fire me. Jones: You will pay for this. Jones: I can’t help noticing that while I am plotting your downfall, I’m on double pay – I’ve got this five-year wage packet from my new employers plus that wheelbarrow of cash you gave me to walk away with when you decided I wasn’t up to it any more.

Now that Jones is back in Wallaby green and gold, this World Cup is also, of course, an extended Eddie referendum. It’s a case study in his coaching, in his strengths and weaknesses, his World Cup winnability. And so it is also, therefore, an examination of the RFU and its ability to understand talent, its acumen in hiring and firing.

Wallabies players after losing to New Zealand in September. Picture: Getty Images

So it’s impossible not to cast your mind forward to that Marseille weekend and think: how will Englishmen feel if Jones proves that he was right all along? What if Australia derail his old sweet chariot and Eddie proves that actually he was completely on top of the job spec at his England Pennyhill Park base and maybe winning four out the past ten Six Nations games was indeed the smart route to World Cup glory? How foolish does the RFU look then?

Some nervous Englishmen are asking: when the RFU rewarded Jones with that weighty severance package, why wasn’t there a non-compete clause in there too? The governing body said yesterday that, from “legal and moral perspectives”, it would have been “unreasonable” to place restrictions on Jones.

But if he had been given just a year’s gardening leave, he could have kept his earning up in club rugby; he had, as we well know, a few club contracts up and running already.

Maybe this extraordinary storyline will return to that. For now, the reaction has been so polarised. Yes, that’s how it is with Jones. He divided Australian opinion long before he signed with England.

One Australian rugby writer, whom I respect, has written: “The Wallabies are once again World Cup contenders. Eddie Jones’s appointment is what the Wallabies need to wake up from their slumber.”

Another insider, whom I also respect, said: “The Aussies have just put a shotgun in their mouth and pulled the trigger.”

Jones and his England team after the World Cup final defeat in 2019. Picture: Getty Images

Somehow, I think both are right. Jones will give the Wallabies a bounce. He will shake them up, reinvigorate, reinspire, he will simplify the message, build momentum and then apply his brilliant coaching brain to the task ahead – the World Cup – and plot something smart. That’s his thing. He joined a beleaguered England and they immediately won 17 games in succession to equal the world record winning streak of 18 in top-tier men’s international rugby.

That, therefore, makes Australia potentially dangerous. What it doesn’t mean, though, is that the RFU was wrong to sack him. Jones’s entire career shows he can do turnarounds, he can do one World Cup cycle, he can spot talent and he can coach it brilliantly. But what he has never done after building a winning team is to sustain their success. He does coaching, not culture; he builds successful campaigns, he doesn’t build empires. Of course, we will never know what would have happened had Jones stayed with England but if, by some extraordinary long shot, Jones’s Australia were to win the World Cup (they are 11-1, England are 11-2), that doesn’t mean that Jones’s England would have won it too.

Jones’s England empire had collapsed. The RFU was right to make the change. Its late change of direction is an acknowledgment that it should have made the break earlier, but that’s all history and we’ve already done that argument – albeit only six weeks ago. Yes, only six weeks. What is really intriguing is how long the Eddie bounce lasts. Or, to put it another way, that loaded gun that Rugby Australia has in its mouth – how long until it goes bang?

Can Jones sustain it until the British & Irish Lions tour in 2025, or will it be before then?

(That Lions tour has suddenly got a whole load more interesting too, not that a Lions tour ever lacks a storyline). Even more significantly, can he keep it going all the way until the following Rugby World Cup in 2027? And that’s a hugely important one for Australia because it’s on their home turf; it’s been built into the long-term planning at Rugby Australia as the comeback competition for the union code, which is so struggling there. What if the gun goes off before then? Without doubt, international rugby has just become an epic drama. If you think sport works as life’s great entertaining sideshow, then you will love the rugby year that is to come.

You may wonder: will Jones’s new employers try to manage him or will they fail there, as the RFU did, and just sit by and observe as the loose cannon fires? How long before Jones causes offence? At what point does he call England “that little shit place” as he once did Wales? How many sideline sponsorship deals can he amass before the World Cup? How will the Wallabies’ team staff react?

And then there is the big stuff. Will Jones win Australia a Bledisloe Cup? Will he win them a World Cup? Will he win them two? Is it Jones who will end up winning the argument?

Of course, it may not be on that Marseille weekend that we find out. England could meet Jones’s Australia in the final. They have done before, though it’s less likely this time around.

For what it’s worth, I think Australia will get a bounce with Jones and England will get a bounce without him, but England will bounce higher because they happen to have better players. And then Jones will go and coach someone else.

The Times