In the merry-go-round of rugby, always given a little spin after the World Cup, there tend to be few gasps of amazement at the audaciousness of an appointment. The moment Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union and recruiting officer for Stuart Lancaster’s replacement, said he was looking for a coach of proven international experience, the list of regulars, slightly crispy through exposure to the light, was brought out again, with Eddie Jones’s name not far from the top.
It’s obviously a good sign that he is – or was – on it. Even better that he is now off it, his name cut and pasted on a four-year contract with England. After the next World Cup, in the Japan he knows so well and to whom he owes the enhancement of his reputation as a worker of the sporting miracle, he will be 59 and bound only for Barbados and a seat at the Kensington Oval.
Before he enjoys his cricket his aim is to make England enjoy their rugby, which is not as daunting as the World Cup may have suggested. It’s improper to refer in any way to the age of Lancaster, but it was only March that England were running France off their feet and scoring tries for fun in the Six Nations. The collapse of England was an eight-day affair on consecutive Pool A Saturdays, brutally abrupt and horribly career-wrecking for the coach and quite possibly the captain, Chris Robshaw.
Doubling up as a newspaper columnist at the time, Jones had a view or two on England, their style and their captain. And very sharply put too. England’s gain is journalism’s loss unless he has it written into his contract that he can carry on being coach and columnist. Probably not. Anyway, the chat the incoming coach – he doesn’t start until 1 December – plans with the old captain in the Black White Red coffee shop in Winchester may not be as smooth as the famed latte served there. Seven is the new magic number in rugby and, for all his workrate and honesty, Robshaw is a six-plus.
He is interesting not only because he may be the first casualty of the new regime. He may expose a certain contradiction. Jones wants a Richie McCaw – don’t we all? – in the back row. But he also wants, following the sage advice of the Guardian’s World Cup columnist, Graham Henry, England to play according to their own distinctive style. There is not exactly a queue of open-side wing-forwards in the English system – compared with, say, Wales, who have Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric and two youngsters, Ollie Griffiths and James Davies, quickly making a name for themselves in the role of what is called the fetcher in New Zealand. Perhaps when he was talking of McCaw, Jones was thinking more of the great one’s willingness to clear up the changing room after training. Robshaw seems the type that would willingly pick up a broom and start sweeping.
With only a short camp between 26 January and the first round of the Six Nations, an away day for England at Murrayfield on 6 February, there is precious little time to start from scratch. Vern Cotter’s Scotland are not exactly going to be willing lab rats in some great England experiment.
It may be safer – and slightly ridiculous – to do what he suggested and invite the England players to wear their club colours to camp and then go through some ritual, presumably slightly demonic in nature, of removing them and pledging an oath to the national cause. Perhaps it could be a mass bleaching, when all the colours of Leicester and Northampton and Gloucester and Bath turn white as one.
If there is no time to discover or reinvent an England way of doing things, does Jones bring a favourite style of his own? Well, Australia in 2003 were fiercely competitive, but hardly rewrote the coaching manual. South Africa in 2007 – EJ was an assistant to Jake White – were ferocious and kicked the leather off the ball. That style shrank the manual.
Ruck and Go was the Japan way, which would be novel in the spiritual home of the maul. But it required a precision of pass that may require more than a fortnight before the Six Nations to perfect. Jones has settled for pragmatism before and he may need to start cautiously, sorting out for example the strange vulnerability of the England scrum and lineout.
Would that mean a role for Steve Borthwick, Japan’s specialist coach at the World Cup and now at Bristol? If so, before England begin to love again, they may have to be earnest for a session or two with their former captain, never knowingly anything other than obsessively attentive to detail. At the risk of appearing a little boring at the dawn of an age of fresh hope, if England go to Scotland with a solid scrum and lineout they will be better prepared than with a desire to look as if they’re enjoying things.
What will be fun is Eddie Jones on display. Joe Schmidt of Ireland is guardedness itself, slightly more animated than the permanently gruff Cotter. Eddie will brighten up the party and may even inspire Warren Gatland to return to his days of spontaneous rashness – he said he used to get bored at press conferences and before he knew it he’d upset the entire Irish nation. If Eddie could prod Warren into a relapse the rugby of the northern hemisphere would be a brighter place. Eddie wants England to smile. We can all join in.
