It started with smiles, as new regimes always do. Worn, this time, by all three of England’s new coaches, Eddie Jones, Steve Borthwick, and Paul Gustard, as they threaded their way through past the TV cameras and through the press up to the top desk. The question is how long they will last, whether they will still be there four weeks from now, after England’s opening match of the Six Nations. In Jones’ case, it seems it is best for everyone to enjoy it on the occasions it is out, since those who know him best say that charming as he can be, he has a severe temper too.
“Optimistic, chippy, smart-arsed, obsessed with getting results” says one Aussie journalist. “A workaholic, single-minded, disciplined, dictatorial, and often difficult to handle,” adds another. He tells a story about the time one of Jones’ assistant coaches was spotted on a flight reading a book about building self-confidence – “so I can stand up to Eddie better,” he explained.
When Jones took over as the head coach of Australia in 2001, his predecessor, Rod Macqueen, told the players: “You’ll definitely find my successor far more interesting and newsworthy than me.” Jones says he doesn’t much mind what anyone else thinks about him, least of all the media.
Which makes him markedly different from his predecessor Stuart Lancaster, who worked hard to win over the press and, through them, the public. The only thing that makes this job different from any other, Jones says, is all the attention, but “because I’m old now, it doesn’t worry me”. Which may explain why he’s always making headlines, as he was again on Wednesday.
Jones has called up seven uncapped players, and cut a handful who had been regular members of the team when Lancaster was in charge. Among them are Tom Wood, who played in 33 of Lancaster’s 46 games, Geoff Parling, who played 29 of the 46, Tom Youngs, who played 28, and Brad Barritt, 26. The nine men cut from the squad have, between them, 297 caps. “If you want the team to grow, that’s what I’ve got to do,” Jones said.
“We have picked seven uncapped players because we believe that they have the potential to be really good England players. It might take them three years to be really good England players but if we want to have a side at the World Cup that is going to win the World Cup, and that is the ultimate aim, we have to bring those players in now and start developing them.” As for the World Cup just gone, Jones says: “What World Cup?”
Jones has done this before. When he took over Japan in 2012, from John Kirwan, they had just finished bottom of their pool in the World Cup, their only points earned in a 23-23 draw with Canada. Only three of Kirwan’s last XV were in Jones’ first XV, which included six uncapped players, and four more on the bench.
Kirwan had picked 10 players who were born overseas but qualified through residency, most of them from New Zealand. Seven of them played in that match against Canada. But only one made the first team Jones picked. The other six were all cut. Four of them never played for Japan again. It was all part, Jones explained, of an effort to overhaul the culture of the team, and create a new identity, one more in keeping with the characteristics of the Japanese game.
“We need to develop the style of play that suits Japanese players,” Jones said. “We’ll quickly identify 30 or 40 players that we are going to take to the next World Cup, get them to understand the Japanese way of rugby.”
He is thinking along similar lines now, in that he wants to play what he calls “a brand of rugby that suits England’s characteristics”. Jones wants England “to have that real strong set-piece, a dominant scrum and a good lineout”, but also to “be able to move the ball”. Borthwick and Gustard echoed those sentiments.
“Identity”, the word they both used, seems to be important to this coaching team, just as it was to Lancaster. But where he sometimes seemed to think it could be fostered through gimmicks, like making the team walk through the crowd on their way to Twickenham, or wear jerseys emblazoned with the Victoria Cross, Jones wants it to stem from their style of play.
Other than that, Jones’ diagnosis seems to be that England’s players have been allowed to coast. “Sometimes if you play in the Premiership here and you do well then you get selected for England and you are quite comfortable,” he says. “We have to make the players a little bit uncomfortable,” he continues. “Some players need to be fitter, some need to be faster, some need less time on the ground”, they need “to be absolutely fanatical about wanting to be in a winning England team. The players who don’t meet it, then maybe they’re not going to be there.”
In the first fortnight, he wants to hear people complaining about how hard it is. “Because then I will know we are getting change.” The players, Jones says, have a choice. “If they don’t want to work hard they won’t be there. It’s going to take more than what they have ever done in their lives to create a wining England team, that’s the reality of it.”
Like I said, they should enjoy the smile on the occasions it’s here – they may not be seeing all that much of it in the weeks ahead.
