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Eddie Jones thinks he is judged harshly because he’s Australian. And he’s right, he is.
But it’s not what it says on his passport that is the issue. Jones would be viewed just as unsympathetically if he was French, or South African, even Welsh or Irish.
It is the position he holds, in the context of his Australian background. That is the crux of this discussion. Coach of the England rugby team. And the first coach to hold that position who isn’t English.
Australian Eddie Jones is the first head coach of the England rugby team who is not English
So Jones is a gun for hire; a means to an end; a hotshot. He cannot claim to be part of some long-term strategic overhaul, some plan that may take decades to come to fruition, and will reform and reshape the national game.
He’s a gun coach, he wins or moves on. And he knows that, too. The day the RFU appointed Jones – the antithesis to the schoolmasterly glorified development officer that was Stuart Lancaster – their goal could be mapped out in all of one syllable. Win.
And while Jones was delivering no-one who bought into his presence, from HQ to the media suites, cared one jot for his Antipodean roots.
Now that has changed, and Jones feels pressured. Yet it isn’t because he’s Australian that it’s raining brickbats. It’s because the RFU’s dream of buying success, of trading their significant resources for dirty glory, is coming to an end.
Unless the signs are misleading, this is an experiment that didn’t quite work. England didn’t quite win the 2019 World Cup and have won a single Grand Slam, in 2016, Jones’ first year.
On the showing of this most recent Six Nations title, neither of the prizes Jones was employed to deliver are anticipated in the coming editions.
England look some distance behind France, and also inferior to Ireland, and as France are the next World Cup hosts it will take a dramatic improvement – or deterioration – for England to be fancied for either title in 2023.
Third this season flatters Jones and his men. They lost to the two teams above them, and the one below them, and the only nations they beat were Italy and the team that lost to Italy.
Jones was hired with the simple brief of winning and he is struggling to do that at present
Indeed, discounting the matches with the perennial wooden spoon holders, Ireland scored 15 tries, France 12, Scotland six, Wales five and England just three. And this is with Marcus Smith at fly-half supposedly ushering in a more expansive strategy.
England didn’t play badly in Paris, but there was precious little sign of burgeoning creativity. Instead there was another reset, another round of the great rebuild. Every autumn, then every winter, appears to find Jones amidst another tactical rethink – of playing personnel, of team patterns, of staff.
France are clearly blessed with some fine players in this generation – not least the brilliant Antoine Dupont – but they have known where they are going for a while now.
England, despite Jones’ claims of progress, seem to take a step forwards, then sideways, then back, then sideways again, returning to the initial starting point, before stepping forward again…
England finished third in this year’s Six Nations but they only won two out of their five games
In every game there is a glimpse of the team they could be, but it is barely sustained for long enough to convince. Even in the ascendancy against an over-rated Scotland team, England found a way to lose.
And World Cups cannot be stolen with a series of cameos, loosely tied together, like this. The performance against New Zealand in 2019 had been building. What has built this winter, or last?
Recently, Six Nations campaigns have passed England by, as if they are little more than dry runs. Ireland, Wales and now France have all won the Grand Slam more recently than England. In three of the last five campaigns England lost more games than they won.
And, really, might this not end up as Jones’ true legacy? Convincing the English public that the oldest tournament in international rugby is no more significant than a series of trial games and all that matters is a World Cup that comes around every four years.
France will be targeting World Cup glory after their sensational Six Nations and Gram Slam win
Jones pays lip service to the Six Nations and its history but his mantra in adversity is that this is a team-building process for the World Cup, as if the Calcutta Cup, Le Crunch and trips to Cardiff and Dublin that are among the most emotional in sport, are some form of annual undercard.
It certainly did not feel that way in 2016, or in 2003 when England landed a Grand Slam under Sir Clive Woodward, on the way to becoming world champions. That is what the greatest teams do. This is the marker France have put down in 2022, while England talk their game.
The only European winners of a World Cup – Woodward’s England – were shaped by winning a Grand Slam that year. This is what Jones was brought in to replicate.
To shy from that uncomplicated truth is a dereliction of duty. He wins or he goes: from day one, that was the spec.
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