Coincidences do happen but the sudden flood of cash on Eddie Jones to replace Stuart Lancaster as England’s head coach has a knowing feel to it. Some bookies have even stopped taking bets on the former Australia and Japan coach. Could it be that England are finally acting more decisively off the field than they ever did on it during the Rugby World Cup?
The Rugby Football Union is saying little but finding someone vaguely interested has not been entirely straightforward. In theory it should be easy: advertise a job with a salary of hundreds of thousands of pounds then just sit back and wait for top-quality candidates to crawl to your door over broken glass, or whatever else is lying on the damp, wintry streets of Twickenham.
Not so for the RFU which, with one or two notable exceptions, has yet to be flooded with positive responses. Even Jones has just tied the knot with the Stormers in Cape Town and will require some prising away.
Just one man is actively waving his arms around and shouting: “Over here!” like a castaway on an uninhabited desert island. Quite what Jake White’s current employers, Montpellier, privately think of this barely concealed enthusiasm is another matter but that is an issue for them. If the RFU goes for White, who has barely coached at Test level since 2007, it will have shown all the vision and imagination of a week-old doughnut. The view of White’s fellow South African Brendan Venter, the former Saracens director of rugby, was certainly unequivocal. Venter saw Harlequins’ comprehensive victory over White’s Montpellier last week and ended up clutching his head at what he saw before saying: “Jake White has definitely not embraced the modern way of playing. Kicking everything. Good luck England. Having worked over there I can assure you the Twickenham faithful will be cutting their wrists if Jake got that job.”
It is only fair to remind everyone that White coached the 2007 World Cup-winning Springboks and had a subsequent successful spell with the Brumbies in Australia. He is certainly well travelled and highly experienced. His coaching CV, though, is not littered with happy endings and, barring three Tests as a technical adviser to Tonga last year, the evidence he is the man the RFU is looking for is scarcely mountainous.
Jones, who helped out White as a technical adviser at the 2007 World Cup, would be a far better bet. Crucially, the 55-year-old has also spent time in the Premiership, with Saracens.
The Exeter head coach, Rob Baxter, is among those who believe such local knowledge is essential and cautions the RFU against looking abroad at the expense of the current leading Premiership candidates. “You can’t say that coaching, say, 15 South Africans is the same as coaching 15 Englishmen,” argues Baxter. “They want different things from you. I think English coaches are the guys best placed to work on the management of England’s best players through into an international environment and getting the best out of them. A South African is culturally different to an English guy who’s different to a Scotsman who’s different to a New Zealander.
“Knowing how to bring the best out of those people in a team situation is important. I’m not saying good coaches can’t deal with different cultures but you’ve got to be very careful. You can’t suddenly turn around and say it’s going to be the same in this country because it’s not. The RFU have got to stop and think about who’s got the right abilities, the right connections and standing within the game, the respect of other coaches and wants to play in a way the players will buy into. They’re the serious questions they’ve got to answer, not who’s done it before. That’s too simplistic.” The thoughtful Baxter also makes the fair point that Europe has been the finishing school for virtually all the southern hemisphere coaches – Warren Gatland, Steve Hansen, Joe Schmidt, Vern Cotter, Michael Cheika – who have now nudged their way into “super coach” territory.
Would Gatland, for example, have developed into such a brilliant tournament coach without his time at Wasps? “They had no previous international experience but teams over here felt they needed someone from the southern hemisphere,” notes Baxter. “We provided that to them. That part of it seems strange to me, I don’t mind saying that.”
And so we wait to see if the bookies’ odds are accurate. If not, as already mentioned in these columns, the RFU is in a tricky position. If the six best options – Gatland, Jones, Cheika, Schmidt, Hansen and Wayne Smith – all have other fish to fry, then what next?
The fact the casting vote ultimately belongs to the chief executive, Ian Ritchie, not necessarily a specialist in modern rugby coaching trends, adds a further layer of uncertainty.
On top of everything else, the Six Nations is approaching fast. What if Lancaster’s assistant coaches, Andy Farrell, Graham Rowntree and Mike Catt, were to remain in charge for the tournament and England do really well?
Two conclusions are safe to draw: money does not guarantee you happiness and the RFU has a very delicate decision to make.
Backing the Euro
ACKING THE EURO
Compared with the desperate events in Paris, the subsequent issue of European Rugby fixture chaos pales into insignificance. For Bath’s owner, Bruce Craig, however, to suggest his team’s postponed game against Toulon will never be played was not his finest call. Craig himself played a leading role in wresting control of the tournament away from the old union-based European Rugby Cup Ltd, theoretically allowing French and English clubs more control of their own destinies. It is hardly impossible, surely, for Bath to postpone their Premiership game against Northampton on 5 December and for Toulon to do the same with their home Top 14 fixture versus Agen, allowing the outstanding Pool 5 fixture to be rescheduled for that weekend.
Toulon could then play Agen during the Six Nations period when there are some spare weekends in the Top 14 while the Bath v Northampton game could be played on a date to be confirmed in April or early May. Not to play the Toulon v Bath pool match at all would affect the tournament’s integrity and reflect less than brilliantly on the priorities of those in charge of it. Craig is not to blame for rugby’s global fixture overload but he does have an obligation to do everything in his power to seek a solution to a problem we must all pray is a unique one.
Worth watching …
ORTH WATCHING..
Wasps v Toulon. Wasps’ hugely impressive away win against Leinster could hardly have been better timed. Not only was it the clearest possible statement that Wasps mean business in Europe this year but it also sets up this Sunday’s rendezvous with Toulon beautifully. The defending champions will arrive in the unfamiliar environs of Coventry not having played a pool game and will find the hosts almost unrecognisable from the side they defeated in last season’s quarter-finals. The back-row duel involving Nathan Hughes, James Haskell and George Smith versus Steffon Armitage, Juan Smith and Juan Martín Fernández Lobbe will be worth the admission price alone.
