England’s performance in the autumn internationals has ensured that any lingering doubts over Eddie Jones’ future after a difficult 2018 have “evaporated”, even though the head coach blew through the RFU budget for the last financial year.
The Rugby Football Union released their figures for the year up to June 2018 that coincided with England slump in form after two near-perfect years under Jones, combined with significant drops in income and subsequent redundancies due to “growing uncertainty” and “challenging times” ahead for the world’s richest union.
That wasn’t helped by Jones going over his allocated budget for the 2017/18 season, and although outgoing RFU chief executive Steve Brown said that the overspend was not the £900,000 that had been reported, he did confirm that Jones has been ordered to spend within the allocated budgets in the lead up to the Rugby World Cup next September.
“It was certainly true that the overall England budget in the previous financial year was overspent,” Brown said. “It wasn’t as material as has maybe been suggested by people so we won’t go into detail now but it’s a mixture, it wasn’t the summer tour specifically, it was a mixture of costs around player flows in and out of England.
“That was part of it, and also some new things that were being tried at the time that we’ve now pulled back on and are actually managing tightly within the budgets. Yes, it did happen in the previous year, and we’ve got control of it, everyone’s clear of that from Eddie and his team downwards.”
Brown explained that the overspend was partly due to the number of players having to travel for unplanned circumstances such as injuries and disciplinary hearings, as well as occasions when Jones needed an enlarged squad to cope with the demands of coaching England through a post-Lions tour year where they were heavily depleted by injury.
But despite this, the 58-year-old now looks secure through to Japan 2019, with victories over South Africa, Japan and Australia and a one-point defeat by New Zealand enough to secure Jones’ position following England’s worst ever Six Nations finish and a series defeat in South Africa.
RFU chairman Andy Cosslett added: “I think the performance in the autumn was extremely good and I think that discussion if it was there recently has certainly evaporated now.
“Like any budget holder, Eddie and his team have to manage to their numbers which they are doing. It’s absolutely clear, and we’ve got a very good line of sight about where the costs running into the World Cup are, we’ve got it line-by-line, day-by-day. We’ll be making sure that’s safeguarded going to the World Cup because we want to win it.”
