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...
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...
Smashed in the Rugby Championship opener, the Wallabies have hit early trouble in their 2023 World Cup quest. Yet their coach says it won’t take much to get his side ‘back in the money’Eddie Jones said he wanted a “robust performance” from his new-look Wallabies. He got an insipid debacle. He told media he had coached his men to play like “mongrel dogs”. He delivered a mob of mewling pussycats. He promised fans this week was the first step toward a “smash and grab” on rugby’s greatest prize. Instead, 62-days out from the World Cup, a season that promised so much has kicked off with disaster.After all the hoopla about Jones returning as the saviour of Australian rugby, his Wallabies...
Beating the All Blacks in 2019, losing the final and his untimely dismissal leave Eddie Jones wondering what might have beenOf all the things Eddie Jones said during his seven years as England coach, and there were plenty of them, one particular idea seemed to strike a jarring note.It was in the immediate aftermath of England’s masterful victory over the All Blacks in the 2019 World Cup semi-final, when they were one second-half defensive error away from “nilling” the greatest rugby team on the planet. Jones was bubbling, quite rightly, after witnessing the plan he had lovingly constructed transformed into reality in such dominant fashion. Continue reading...
Surely you would not sack the most successful coach you’ve had without a clear vision. So what is the RFU’s grand plan?Eight minutes to play and England are 14 points down against New Zealand. Will Stuart has just scored in the corner and Marcus Smith is standing over the conversion, on the 22, five metres in from the right touchline. It should be Owen Farrell’s kick.Farrell, who has made every shot at goal so far in the autumn, 15 out of 15 in 200 minutes of Test rugby, is on the pitch, but struggling with a dead leg. So it falls to Smith. He strides up, leans back a touch too much as he swings his boot through and the...