The fiercely Australian coach is suddenly a free agent with an axe to grind and a World Cup plan – and the Wallabies need a wildcard to win big in 2023In sacking Eddie Jones as head coach nine months out from the World Cup, English rugby may have gift-wrapped an early Christmas present for the woebegone Wallabies in 2023. The fiercely Australian Jones is suddenly a free agent with an axe to grind and a World Cup plan. That makes him a very dangerous adversary to his old masters, and a huge – if slightly volatile – weapon of mass destruction should the men in gold snap him up as a gun-for-hire.Rugby Australia has backed its coach, Dave Rennie, through...
Talk of firing the coach nine months out from a World Cup ignores the very traits that make him worth sticking byThere have been a few good Eddie Jones stories going round the grounds lately. Joe Simpson told one the other day about the time Jones gave a steak to one of his assistant coaches as an apology for shouting at him. When the coach got home he found out it was a bag of sausages. “You’re not ready for steak yet,” Jones told him.Here’s another, a little different to some of the others. In 2019, Jones read a Guardian article about an England fan who had travelled to watch the team play in Japan while he was sick with...
The Bristol strongman was at the heart of everything his side did and showed why Eddie Jones puts so much faith in himYou might talk about Marcus Smith’s kicking or his deft finishing, about Guy Porter’s happy knack of being in the right place at the right time, twice, or Freddie Steward’s strength in the air and his punishing runs from the deep. But really in years ahead, long after all that and the rest of this 52-13 victory has been forgotten about, it will be Ellis Genge’s performance that people are still talking about. Japanese coaches, at least, will still be telling the little kids they are teaching spook stories about him, and how Genge will come for them...
Defeat by Argentina means another campaign begins on the wrong foot as coach’s charges struggle to find cohesionFor all of England’s faults against Argentina on Sunday, perhaps it is the sense they are doing the same things over again and expecting different results which most maddens. Dim penalties conceded, little penetration in attack, a sluggishness that left Twickenham in a soggy stupor – all are criticisms aimed at Eddie Jones’s side before but England look no closer to fixing them with next year’s World Cup looming into view.Indeed, beginning campaigns slowly has become a worrying trend. On top of the Argentina defeat, they lost their opening summer Test against Australia and to Scotland in round one of the Six Nations....
England have made changes for the second Test in Australia with the World Cup in mind but the coach is on thin iceBacks against the wall, endless personnel reshuffles, constant talk about things coming good eventually. England are currently 12,000 miles away from Downing Street but their series against Australia is at a not dissimilar crossroads. Lose heavily on Saturday and, as in Westminster, public confidence in those in charge back in London may ebb away rapidly.Which is why Eddie Jones’s callow backline selection for the allegedly crucial second Test against the Wallabies has raised more than a few eyebrows. Three starting 21-year-olds, a 19-year-old “apprentice” on the bench and a debutant who used to captain the University of Sydney?...