Eddie Jones is a rugbyholic. He is the game’s equivalent of Arsène Wenger, and not only because he is an English import from Japan, an obsessive whose life is consumed by his sport. At the age of 55 and two years after he suffered a stroke, his fire burns as fiercely as it did when he started coaching 20 years ago after a headline-shy playing career as a hooker.
There is one significant difference between Wenger and Jones. The former is an idealist committed to one playing style but the latter is a pragmatist who believes in diversity. He may be Australian but he will not get England to try to play like the Wallabies, or Japan where he spent the past four years coaching the national side to unprecedented success.
Speaking after Japan’s final World Cup group match against the USA in Gloucester last month, Jones said he believed strongly in national identity, bemoaning what he saw as a trend of trying to emulate the All Blacks. He will look to augment the Englishness of the men in white, not take away from it, and while over the years he has developed a reputation for being demanding – he is reputed to need even less sleep than Margaret Thatcher, poring over videos and reports into the small hours and getting up early to look at more – he is open to ideas with a voracious appetite for learning.
He expects others to keep up with him, which proved an issue during his time as the Saracens director of rugby in 2008-09, but his reputation for being dictatorial is unfair. When he first took charge of Japan, the country of his mother’s birth, he noticed how players took instructions literally. “If you tell them, for example, to attack the opposition, they will carry on doing it even if tactical opportunities open up elsewhere,” he said. “They were used to obeying and it was about persuading them to think on their feet. The players are the ones who make decisions on the field and you have to empower them.”
Jones’s coaching career has been spent in Australia, South Africa, England – he played for Leicester during the 1991 World Cup, making one start in his three appearances for the Tigers – and Japan. He has been part of three World Cups, guiding the Wallabies to the 2003 final against England, working as the Springboks’ technical adviser when they won the 2007 tournament and – while in charge of the Brave Blossoms this year – becoming the first team to win three group matches and fail to qualify for the quarter-finals. As a World Cup coach, he has tasted defeat only twice.
“One thing I am sure of is that England will be a powerhouse in the 2019 World Cup under Eddie,” said the Western Stormers chief executive, Gert Smal, who earlier this year persuaded his fellow coach with the 2007 Springboks to join the franchise only to wave him goodbye little more than two weeks after Jones had arrived in Cape Town. “I really enjoyed working with Eddie in the World Cup eight years ago and signing someone with his achievements and credentials was a massive coup for us. Then England offered him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the chance to win the World Cup again.”
Jones is the most approachable leading coach in the game, always willing to stay behind after a media conference to talk about rugby. And he always has something to say that is worth writing down. When asked in 2007 to explain how a coach who had committed to a running game with the Brumbies and Australia was organising the back division of the risk-averse Springboks, he pointed out the South African mentality was different and his job was to embrace and enhance it. “You never,” he said, “apologise for winning.”
Which is why he will not be radical with England in terms of gameplan. His underlying philosophy, hatched in his playing days with Randwick, is to move the ball and attack. But while Jones the Wallaby coach would pick George Ford at fly-half, he will in an England tracksuit give Owen Farrell greater consideration. What he will ensure is that far more attention is lavished on the breakdown while the scrum and lineout, the staples of the English game, get back to where they were before the World Cup.
“I am not sure Eddie received the credit he deserved in 2007,” said the former South Africa second-row Bakkies Botha. “He brought a calmness into the coaching team and we learned a lot as players from him. Wherever he goes, he leaves a footprint and England have done well to get him.”
There have been lows in Jones’s career: he lost his job with Australia in 2005 after a run of defeats and then had a wretched season with the Reds. He left Saracens early in 2009, saying then it had been one of the unhappiest times of his career, but not without making a mark. “His stay was too short,” said the club’s former No8 Michael Owen. “He was a top-class operator, meticulous and hard-working. He has a clear vision and is just what England are looking for. And he will ruffle a few feathers.”
That Jones will definitely do. It will be interesting to see if he asks to become involved in the talks between the Rugby Football Union and the Premiership clubs over a new elite player agreement having said his first task, before meeting the World Cup captain, Chris Robshaw, and the current England coaching staff, would be to speak to the directors of rugby of the top 12 clubs.
He will cover the English game like a blanket because that is his way. He will talk and he will challenge, relishing every moment of being back at the forefront of the game. After Japan defeated South Africa in the World Cup two months ago, he said his goal was to take them to the quarter-finals. “Then I can retire from coaching and be like Clive Woodward and tell everyone what to do on television.”
Scotland ended that dream, which is where Jones’s career with England will start in February, but it is hard to see him ever retiring: he is not the retiring type. After the 2007 World Cup final as he considered what the future held, he said he wanted to be involved in the next tournament. He missed out, so when England came calling as he looked out on Table Mountain in Cape Town and marvelled at the scenery, the RFU was never going to have to break the bank to get him.
