EDDIE IN HIS ELEMENTS
Coach thrilled by his team’s display of leadership and resolve in hostile conditions
To hear what is known as eddie Jones’ briefing after the match on Saturday night, the media had to leave the stadium on its west side, skirt two large team buses and re-enter the building 40 yards along near the dressing-room areas. It was at that moment that the game’s observers received enlightenment.
Not from Jones — not yet — but from the elements. The swirling winds, the fearsome lashings of rain. In seconds, clothes were wet through, notebooks sodden. From the stand, it looked bad. as experienced by the players, it must have been horrendous. and, no, it didn’t make for the finest spectacle.
Yet Jones had a Jack o’Lantern grin and the enthusiasm of a critic who had just witnessed the best show in town. This painful war of attrition, decided by an error from Stuart hogg, littered with mistakes from boot and hand, won by Storm Ciara as much as by england, left him delighted.
he considered it an advert, not just for his team but for the Six Nations tournament as a whole. he was perplexed by the idea that, in the Southern hemisphere, this was exactly the sort of game that led to northern rugby being viewed with disdain.
Jones insisted this wasn’t the case. ‘Fact,’ he said. as a son of the south, he rather had the jump on us there.
and he’s probably right. The usual trolls and cynics may do their thing online, but anyone who knows rugby will appreciate that to achieve a largely coherent victory in Saturday’s circumstances was an impressive achievement.
england returned to form, of sorts, by winning a game they largely controlled in doubly hostile conditions and did so under the pressure of a significant humbling in Paris last week. It seems foolish, then, to believe that countries as steeped in rugby as New Zealand, South africa and australia do not appreciate what unfolded for england in edinburgh — on the rebound and against the elements.
Jones was in his element, too. Not in full Fast eddie mode, but vindicated in his selections and preparation and surveying the room from a position of strength. When it was put to him that the nations in the rugby Championship might have a different slant on the 138th Calcutta Cup, the rejoinders were as forcefully breezy as those Murrayfield gusts.
‘ah, no they wouldn’t mate, no they wouldn’t,’ said Jones. ‘They wouldn’t and they don’t. You think they do, because you want to think they think like that. But everyone appreciates how tough a competition this is.’
But if you weren’t a rugby fan, eddie, and you saw it?
‘Why watch it, then, if you’re not a rugby fan? That’s a bit silly, isn’t it? Look, you get new fans by having a good product and a good product is a game that’s contested, that’s tough, that’s played in a number of different ways.
‘Now if you had that game every week for 12 weeks, no, people wouldn’t like it. But that’s one game in five. Next week it might be free-flowing, the ball might be fizzing around everywhere, like it was in the Ireland-Wales game. That’s the great thing with our sport, all the different ways.
‘If you don’t have that it becomes like T20 cricket where you know what the game’s going to be all the time. The Southern hemisphere has more respect for the Northern hemisphere game than you think.
I know that for a fact. They admire the Six Nations as we admire the rugby Championship.’
Jones plainly wasn’t aware of the news linking South africa with a Seven Nations Championship, revealed in Sportsmail on Saturday, but he produced a defiant defence of a singularly european competition.
Whereas the north’s administrators are continually trying to find ways of invigorating the present format Jones, as a relative newcomer, still finds novelty in ancient conflicts and rivalries.
‘I was getting a history lesson about england and Scotland, the things that had happened between the countries,’ he added. ‘There’s a lot of meaning involved in a game like this. The Six Nations is called the greatest rugby tournament in the world and I think it is. Why would you want to add other teams?
‘ I can only talk from Super rugby’s perspective. That was the gold standard of rugby, 12 teams, brilliant — then they made it 14, 16 teams and it lost its allure.
‘There’s something about the Six Nations because of its history, the relationship between the nations, that is what makes it outstanding. This is a much harder competition to contest than the World Cup.
‘I mean the breakdown is — ooh,
I can’t use that word. has anyone got a thesaurus? Let’s say physical. and it’s only going to get more and more physical.
‘There has been a rise in the quality of the teams, from the first Six Nations to now. They’re all at such a high level and the gap between them is so small.’
Brutal is the world Jones was looking for, if you hadn’t guessed. he’s still smarting a little at being criticised for using it to describe england’s gameplan in France.
Yet it would have been the perfect adjective for Saturday’s game. Not just the rugby, which was fiercely contested as always, but the conditions. england mastered a brutal afternoon in edinburgh, one that, as Jones said, tested the leadership qualities of the team beyond the captaincy of owen Farrell. Jones singled out George Ford, Mako Vunipola and Maro Itoje for leading roles and paid tribute to match-winner ellis Genge, whose try proved the difference.
‘he’s wild,’ said Jones. ‘You can always tame a horse but you can’t put wildness in. So he’s still not tame, he’s still one of those horses that kicks and punches. But he knows which direction to go in, he knows when to attack now.
‘as a coach you’ve got to be prepared to gamble. It’s high risk, because a player like that can
either be excellent or a negative factor in your team. But he’s matured, he’s worked hard. He’s worked on his mentality, on fitness, so we’re pleased with his progress.
‘I love a contest like this. Loved it, loved it. This was a fantastic test because players have got to adapt to those conditions, they’ve got to find a way to win.
‘You can’t play how you want to play, so I think it’s the most intriguing rugby, actually. To come up here and do that after we got a kick in the guts in Paris is one of the most satisfying wins we’ve had.
‘We had to pick ourselves up off the floor because the press here is difficult to handle and young guys read their social media and we have to fix that, get the right mental attitude for what is always a difficult game. That takes leaders. They had to adapt in different ways continuously.’
Next up are Ireland, who England need to halt to end their chances of a Grand Slam. And some will argue it is impossible to read too much into Saturday’s match due to the unique conditions.
But the complacency in England’s game in Paris was missing — blown away by Storm Ciara and by whatever Jones said and did to recalibrate his team.
Spectacle or not, it shouldn’t be hard to be impressed by that.