He’s a winner . . . but hiring Eddie was always a risk

THE move for Eddie Jones was seen as a masterstroke from the RFU. After the worst World Cup of any host in history, they reacted by importing the wisdom of one of the sharpest minds in the game.

In reality, though, their plans of late have not been greatly different from those of the Football Association, when faced with disaster. They just do the opposite to the last regime.

The FA replaced the awkward Glenn Hoddle with the populist Kevin Keegan. Then the tactically lightweight Keegan with an apparent deep thinker in Sven Goran Eriksson. When he turned out to be something of a charlatan, they brought in an unassuming Englishman, Steve McClaren. He was too soft, so they went with a hatchetfaced Italian disciplinarian in Fabio Capello. Then another Englishman, Roy Hodgson — and on it goes to this day, each manager the opposite of his predecessor.

Sam Allardyce, the fireman, then Gareth Southgate, the fresh face. The identity of the next manager is unknown but on previous patterns of behaviour, don’t rule out Harry Bassett.

And that is what the RFU did with Jones. He was the polar opposite of Stuart Lancaster, an Australian larrikin spirit to the previous man’s straightlaced schoolmaster. Lancaster was too fixated on putting distance between his regime and that of Martin Johnson’s dwarf tossers, but Jones didn’t care about any of that.

He made Dylan Hartley (above) captain — and England winners and hated again. Yet just as the FA ended up sacking Big Sam for behaving like Big Sam, so Jones was always going to end up having to make a public apology somewhere down the line.

Having called the Irish ‘scummy’ and gone full Anne Robinson on Wales, he is under even more pressure this weekend. He must deny Ireland the Grand Slam to avoid three straight defeats, having just delivered their team talk for them. If they were fired up to win at Twickenham before, imagine that dressing room on Saturday at 2.35pm.

True, Jones’s words were a year old, and he thought he was talking to a delegation of Japanese businessmen, but even so. No Englishborn coach would have addressed that assembly in such incendiary fashion, even at a private function.

Yet this is the RFU’s predicament. They gave up peace of mind when they tendered the position abroad. They wanted a winner, they got a winner; but they also got a coach who thinks, and talks, differently, and has none of the button-down conservatism of his predecessors.

Jones is here to hit and run. He is passing through, as Capello was; and just as Capello didn’t care for local sensibilities when restoring John Terry to the captaincy, so Jones will always shoot from the lip and expect his adopted country to deal with the fall-out.

That is the bargain the RFU have made, same as the FA. They will be hoping it proves more worthwhile than it has done for football.