Wanted man Jones could coach Lions after extending contract with England
Australian will remain in England role until 2021 RFU adds break clause to cover World Cup exit
Eddie Jones will be given permission by the Rugby Football Union to coach the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa, despite signing a two-year contract extension yesterday to remain in his post as England head coach to 2021.
Jones’s original contract, which was due to expire at the end of the World Cup in Japan next year, did not allow him to be available for last year’s Lions tour of New Zealand.
However, the new deal, thought to be worth in the region of £750,000 per year including bonuses, will leave the Australian free to be involved in the Springbok tour if asked by the Lions board, even if it is likely to require some sort of pre-tour sabbatical.
Stephen Brown, RFU chief executive, refused to disclose whether the contract extension contained a specific Lions clause, but insisted it would not prevent Jones from being involved. “No, it wouldn’t prohibit him at all,” said Brown. “Bear in mind that we’re a quarter-shareholder in the Lions and we’ll have some say in that, too.
“Our view would be that if we’re planning for success, and we have come out of a very successful World Cup, and Eddie is the right coach for the Lions, the arrangement isn’t going to preclude that. This is fundamentally about England, but, no, it doesn’t preclude a Lions situation if it were to occur.”
Jones, who also ruled himself out of involvement in last year’s Lions tour because of his desire to concentrate on his day job, would be the strong favourite to succeed Warren Gatland if England were to enjoy a successful World Cup. But the Australian said he was “not arrogant or presumptuous enough to think I would be offered the Lions role”. He added: “It is not really part of my rugby history. So I would see that as being consequential of coaching well, so it is not something I really think or worry about.”
The contract extension for Jones is a reward for a remarkable run of results. England have won 22 of 23 Tests, including two Six Nations titles. It is also a key feature of a new succession plan announced by the RFU, in which the governing body will appoint a head coach at the end of the 2019-2020 season.
Brown said it was critical for England to change the previous haphazard approach to appointing head coaches. “In the past, we have tended to have this disruptive reset of our coaching teams at the end of every four-year cycle,” he said. “We wanted to avoid that and also have a smooth transition into the next head coach.”
How the succession plan will work in reality is less clear-cut. Jones insisted that while he was head coach, he would remain in charge, but that raised questions about how that would work if the RFU went for an international heavyweight to replace him.
The RFU professional rugby department, including Nigel Melville, has already begun assembling a longlist of potential successors, which will include Mark Mccall of Saracens and Exeter’s Rob Baxter from the Premiership, although Baxter said yesterday he would not be interested in the role in the near future. The leading candidates with international experience would include Andy Farrell, the Ireland defence coach, Warren Gatland, Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt and Montpellier’s Vern Cotter.
It appears that Jones’s role in the transition period will be flexible. “We’ve thought about how that would work,” Brown said. “The whole agreement we have with Eddie, and it’s important we got this right, is that we will discuss it at that time. We agreed with Eddie what’s the best thing for English rugby, we worked out what that option was and put it in place.”
To avoid the confusion that followed England’s pool-stage exit from the 2015 tournament, which ultimately led to the departure of Stuart Lancaster and his coaching team just a year after they had all signed six-year extensions, it also contains a cast-iron break-clause for performance at next year’s World Cup.
It is understood that Jones’s extension will be terminated if England do not reach the knockout stages, while a quarter-final exit would also come under severe scrutiny, with the manner of the defeat likely to be decisive.
“There are always key objectives and targets you have to deliver, and if you fail there is inherently a performance element,” said Brown about the break clause. “But we’ve been quite explicit given the nature of what this is about and given the focus we’ve had, pretty much from Eddie’s appointment, to get back in shape to win the 2019 World Cup. So it wasn’t a difficult discussion.
“We looked at various situations in the past and observed others as well and it seemed that [Lancaster deal] didn’t work particularly well, clearly. That is some of the reason why we are clear about the performance break clause as well. That is what this is all about at the end of the day, which is winning. Learn from the past, learn from good practice and think differently, too.”