Big brother is watching you
Eddie Jones reveals cameras constantly check on his players in camp Coach says side are 40% fitter than when he took England to Murrayfield in 2016
Eddie Jones has revealed the lengths to which he has gone in order to ensure that England “could not have had better preparation” for tomorrow’s Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield, disclosing that at their Surrey training base “the only place we don’t have cameras is in the players’ rooms”.
England flew north yesterday confident in their ability to deal with whatever comes their way: be it the opposition, the crowd, the weather or the skirl of the bagpipes. Jones has made a point of getting the team to confront all aspects of possible adversity in training every day and revealed how much effort goes into determining if a player’s attitude is right.
“The way players prepare, the amount of time they spend talking about the game, players’ faces,” he replied when asked how he gauged his team’s frame of mind. “Are they on time for meetings? Are they stretching properly? So we watch the videos. We watch what they do in the gym. The only place we don’t have cameras is in their rooms. We might get into trouble if we did that. The art of coaching is not telling them how to play. The art of coaching is how to manage them to play consistently.”
The data that Jones gathers on all aspects; the monitoring of physical and mental preparation, feeds into assessments of their fitness for purpose. He also uses insights from his captain Dylan Hartley. “It is a 24-hour job [that of captain],” said Jones of the man who passes Jonny Wilkinson’s mark of 91 caps tomorrow to become England’s second-most capped player. “You have got to be on it. You have to be a pair of eyes. You have got to be watching. You have got to be looking at the players’ behaviour.”
The head coach believes England are “ready to go, for a massive game”, charting the journey from when he took over two years ago to this point when they again travel to Murrayfield by stating that the side were “conservatively, 40 per cent fitter”, and could “tough it out in any situation”. Jones was minded to review footage of the first training session he took in 2016 prior to his opening match, also against Scotland in Edinburgh, where he was so appalled by the standards he saw that he said to himself: “Goodness me, what have I got myself into here?” The transition from what England were to now as they reach the mid-point of their 2018 defence of the Natwest Six Nations title is striking, with 24 wins from Jones’ 25 Tests in charge. The Australian states that the health and well-being of a team are “transient, a dynamic thing”, there one day and not the next. This all-encompassing approach of Jones extends to the manner in which England play, appropriate to the circumstances of the moment with the head coach remarking that if it takes “kick and clap” tomorrow as it did in 2016, when England won 15-9, then so be it. “That is what we are trying to develop, a team that can find a way to win. The best teams can do that. You don’t hear Man City talk about playing away from home. You just hear them talk about playing.
“In 2016, when I reviewed that first session, after 20 minutes they were shot, they couldn’t run any more. They weren’t fit. They wanted to play a system of defence, a system of attack and I thought that this is going to be hard work. You have got to be fit to win Test matches. How many matches have the All Blacks won in the last 20 minutes? We practise for that now.
“Our players have learned more from themselves than they have from me. They have learned how to play winning rugby. That have developed that mindset. Test match rugby is not about entertainment.
“It is about finding a way to win. The players have found a way to win and they like winning and they want to get better at it. If you want it [razzle dazzle] you don’t stay in the job long.”
Hartley agreed on fitness levels. “I am a hell of a lot fitter than I was,” he said. “If you compared our GPS from then to now, it would be unbelievable. We are better rounded to play rugby now.”
Jones was nothing but complimentary about Scotland, refusing to be drawn into any reaction to the inference of his opposite number, Gregor Townsend, that England played fast and loose with the offside line in defence. In stark contrast to his overt verbal targeting of Wales fly-half, Rhys Patchell, Jones would only note that Scotland stand-off, Finn Russell, was “a talented boy, a good player”.
England have made one change from the team that beat Wales, slotting in fit-again Nathan Hughes at No8 for the injured Sam Simmonds.
“We have focused intensely on this game,” said Jones. “I can remember watching the Calcutta Cup as a kid, with Finlay Calder and John Jeffrey, Colin Deans and Gavin Hastings, teams of passion and conviction, which is what Gregor is trying to get with Scotland now. It is a massive game and we are ready.”