The coach was jeered by the crowd but happy after the Wallabies beat Georgia to give Jones his first win in six startsAustralia are away. They have their first victory of the season and points on the board in this 2023 World Cup. After easily accounting for Georgia 35-15 at Stade de France, Eddie Jones will be delighted with the potential of this performance. It is early days and far greater challenges lie ahead but his young side are starting to sprout wings.With his 82% win record at World Cups and his mad genius riffs, Jones is Australia’s greatest weapon at this Cup. The coach was jeered by sections of the 75,000 crowd when he appeared on the big screen...
Despite losing all five of their warm-up games, the draw has been kind for the Wallabies, but they will watch out for FijiRight now there is no rear-view mirror. There are only 20 teams, 48 matches and one World Cup trophy ahead. The form guides that got them here are different. The philosophies of the coaches are unique. The chemistry of the squads and the players are algorithms no one can predict. All we know is that they gather on the same line in France this weekend chasing the greatest prize in rugby union.The mantras from the Australian camp are to soothe critics and reassure fans. Moving in the right direction. Coming together. Starting to click. But words are not...
Eddie Jones maintains loss to France doesn’t mean anything for Rugby World Cup but noble defeat is becoming a habit for this teamThey lost again. They improved again. They fired some shots but often into their own feet. They dominated possession but didn’t convert it to points. They created lots of chances but squandered plenty of opportunities. They were mostly brave and occasionally stupid. Again.Australia’s 41-17 loss to France piles more pressure on a side already labouring under a 0-5 start to the season. But the coach maintains this latest pummelling doesn’t mean much in the grander scheme of the Wallabies’ World Cup campaign starting on 10 September. Defeat, Eddie Jones says, isn’t another nail in the coffin, it’s another...
If Eddie Jones’s young team can challenge the World Cup hosts, Australian rugby may just get the ‘historic reset’ it needsThe French invented the amuse-bouche and aperitif to prime the palate before a great feast. The Wallabies will be of similar service when they whet local appetites for the Rugby World Cup in the one-off warmup Test against host nation France on Monday.The Stade de France clash is the fruit of a deal hatched over lunch between the RA chair, Hamish McLennan, and former French rugby boss and World Rugby vice-chair Bernard Laporte in 2021. On the menu in Saint Germaine that day was hare-in-hare-blood-gravy. But the rabbit in the headlights this weekend is Eddie Jones who needs to improve...
The Australia coach has stayed true to his word by rewarding form regardless of age or status in his 33-man squad for the tournament in FranceRuthless and risky, maybe even slightly deranged. The Wallabies 2023 World Cup squad, announced on Thursday night for the “smash and grab” mission on rugby’s greatest prize starting next month in France, shows all the diverse moods of its maverick head coach Eddie Jones.Foremost is the ruthlessness. Six weeks after being named co-captain of Jones’s team, 125-Test talisman and spiritual leader Michael Hooper, 31, has been denied a farewell tour in France after failing to recover from a calf niggle. Similarly, flawed genius fly-half Quade Cooper, 35, has been cast back into the wilderness after...