Coaches’ feud adds spice to richest rivalry
The tussle between Jones and Gatland could prove as dramatic as the rugby at Twickenham today
England v Wales is surely now the best of the Natwest Six Nations rivalries: a modern feud of title deciders, wrapped round the crushing 2015 World Cup group-stage defeat for Stuart Lancaster’s team at Twickenham.
Adding volatility are the two most overachieving coaches in world rugby, who stare across Anglo-welsh and Australia-new Zealand divides.
Eddie Jones v Warren Gatland is a sub-plot so heated that the game has seemed incidental in a week of verbal jab-and-move. There are striking similarities between them. Both are peripatetic former hookers who fell short of Testmatch grade; each has worked his way up from the bottom to achieve transformative outcomes. Their private battle is finely balanced, with today’s clash at Twickenham sure to swing the pendulum again.
A win for injury-depleted Wales would be one of the finest in Gatland’s 10 years as Wales head
‘As players, they both fell short of where their opportunities might have taken them’
coach, and show Jones up for questioning Rhys Patchell’s “bottle”. A victory for Jones on the other hand would confirm the quality of his work in turning England from resource-rich nearly men to big-game ‘closers’ – in the year they finally face New Zealand, the world’s best team.
Sir Ian Mcgeechan, the great Lions coach, who knows both well, sees more similarities than differences. He says: “They are both of the school that if the player’s not up to scratch he’ll know about it. Which, from a player’s perspective, is good because they know what’s acceptable. If you don’t say that, you never reach the standards. You end up getting an honesty from the team because you’ve got an honesty from the coach.”
The build-up to this fixture was hardly lacking intrigue, with Wales’s understudies blowing Scotland away in Cardiff and the pressure rising sharply for England after a routine win in Rome.
But the verbal escalation has been relentless from two coaches who confess to being fascinated by the way Premier League managers shape the message they send out under greater media duress.
Gatland has poked fun at England’s mission: their manifest destiny to unseat the All Blacks as world No 1 and win the 2019 World Cup in Japan. “You set yourself up for a big game and then you potentially become No 1 or someone pulls your pants down,” he said this week.
Gatland is the senior of the two. He will reach 100 Tests in charge of Wales against Ireland in Dublin in a fortnight. Pointedly, he picked the first of his 98 games as Wales coach as his favourite: a comefrom-behind win over England at Twickenham in 2008.
From there, Wales progressed to the first of two Grand Slams. He is also a European Cup winner with Wasps and a league champion in New Zealand with Waikato. As Lions coach, Gatland won in Australia and drew in New Zealand.
Jones, another world-class operator with 23 wins from 24 England games, cannot quite match this CV, though he does have a World Cup winner’s medal from his stint as technical adviser to South Africa in 2007 and a Tri-nations title with Australia.
Before Gatland took charge, as he pointed out in a BBC interview, Wales were winning fewer than 50 per cent of their Six Nations games. Gatland has raised it to 70 per cent, but has felt the strain. “It’s difficult for a Welshman to coach Wales,” he warned, “because it’s so tribal here.” His record against southernhemisphere sides is the only splodge on his CV.
In his decade in charge, though,
Wales have won three times at Twickenham, so no wonder Jones is hyper-alert, as England seek a unique third consecutive Six Nations crown. He has fired plenty back this week, including a shot at Alun Wyn Jones for “intimidating” referees. So much, that even his friend Sir Clive Woodward thinks he has gone too far.
In his Daily Mail column, Woodward wrote: “I can’t imagine England’s big-hitters Dylan Hartley, Mako Vunipola, Maro Itoje, Courtney Lawes, Owen Farrell, Anthony Watson and Chris Robshaw will be too enamoured with these comments on the eve of a match where all the pressure is on England. Their jobs just got considerably more difficult.”
The antagonism can be traced to remarks Jones made in a Telegraph podcast before Gatland led the Lions to a commendable draw in New Zealand last summer: “They have picked a certain style of team based on the influence of the Welsh coaches,” Jones said. “So, I think they are looking to attack like Wales with big, gain-line runners with not much ball movement. I think you struggle to beat the All Blacks like that.”
Gatland was annoyed by this dismissal from a fellow Six Nations coach. Backing Jones to take over in South Africa in 2021, he says: “He [Jones] would do a great job as Lions coach. Three-nil would be expected. It’s probably the easiest of the three tours, isn’t it?”
For both, touchline generalship has eased the pain of not reaching the peak as players. “Warren sat on the bench 40 odd times for New Zealand and never got capped,” Mcgeechan says. “Sean Fitzpatrick always says ‘I was so worried about him I didn’t want to give him any opportunity to come on the field’. They’re both hookers, interestingly. Eddie Jones played against the Lions in ’89 – but not quite at the level Gats had been. The thing that comes out is that they both as players probably fell short of where their opportunities might have taken them.”
Nobody could say that of their coaching careers. England v Wales is now two contests. The second – Jones v Gatland – is worth the admission price all by itself.