EDDIE CAN TACKLE WALLABIES JOB

AL BAXTER wasn’t the first and won’t be the last player to be twisted into a ball of nerves as he prepared for his first meeting with Eddie Jones.

Baxter was a 26-year-old frontrower in his third season with the Waratahs when he was called into a Wallabies camp in Coffs Harbour in August 2003.

Jones was the wily old Australian coach with a well-earned reputation as a tough, no-nonsense character.

“Pretty intimidating. He’s massively intense,” is how Baxter, who went on to a 69-Test Wallabies career, describes their first meeting. It’s an image that stuck to Jones for two decades: uncompromising, passionate, over the top.

But, whether it be with Australia, South Africa, Japan or England, he always produced. It didn’t take long for Baxter to understand why.

“He’s excellent at working out what drives certain players,” Baxter says. “What drove a Stephen Larkham is different to what drove a Phil Waugh and was different to what drove a George Smith. He was good at working that out. Sometimes he got it wrong, but generally he was able to get the best out of players.”

Jones’s five years as England coach ended in early December after a string of poor results and there have been calls for Rugby Australia to bring him back into the fold.

Current Wallabies coach Dave Rennie is reportedly safe until after the World Cup in France next year, and Jones will have plenty of options before then, but could be introduced in a coaching or managerial role.

His analysis would be a huge boost for the struggling Wallabies.

“He basically outworks other coaches,” Baxter says. “He was big on working out who was the best in the world, from a team point of view, and from a positional point of view, and then working out – or reverse engineering – what made them so good, and demanding our players work out similar strategies.”

Jones’s England departure wasn’t dissimilar to the circumstances surrounding the end of his first stint with the Wallabies in 2005, and he’s had a fraught relationship with Australia ever since.

Despite the often frosty relationship, Rugby Australia is open to welcoming him home, and its chairman Hamish McLennan has confirmed he has already spoken to Jones.

Baxter believes Jones is smart enough to adjust his approach.

“Knowing Eddie’s work ethic, he’d be able to adapt and change to the latest techniques, technologies and the latest sport science,” Baxter says.

“He’s the kind of guy that what he applies to players he applies to himself as well. I know he does a lot of background in development, looking into other sports and codes, so I’m pretty sure he’d have developed and evolved his coaching techniques.”