Jones’ four-year plan will lie in ruins if Ford gamble fails
Coaches have been sent home from World Cups for gambling less than Eddie Jones has with his quarter-final team selection. Yet England’s head coach would say it was all part of a master plan conceived after rugby’s richest nation were humiliated by a pool-stage exit against this weekend’s opponents, Australia, the land of Jones’s birth. For symmetry, this takes some beating.
England go out in their own World Cup to Australia in 2015 and hire an Australian coach who leads them into a last-eight match in 2019 against ... Australia. And the game is in Japan, birthplace of his mother and wife, and from where he secured the England job by inspiring Japan to victory over South Africa in Brighton.
There is a case for saying Jones has already dropped from being Japan’s greatest rugby coach to the No 2 spot. His successor, Jamie Joseph, has achieved victories over Ireland and Scotland at this tournament and taken Japan to their first quarter-final. But can Jones match Clive Woodward’s feat in 2003, when England beat, yes, Australia in the final in Sydney, with – yes – Jones as Australia’s head coach?
The stakes are easily counted. Defeat for England in Oita would leave the whole Rugby Football Union 2015-2019 project in ruins. Assuming the public outcry was too great for him to have any chance of staying on (assuming he wanted to), Jones would leave the job with two Six Nations titles in four seasons, but only a marginally improved World Cup record. A quarter-final exit beats a pool-stage one, but only just, given the resources poured into repairing the damage of 2015 and the extraordinary churn of coaches and support staff since he was appointed.
There are players in this England camp who can say they are better than when Jones came in: tougher mentally, and more attuned to what success in international rugby requires. Living in a permanent state of insecurity and being judged almost hour to hour has stopped them developing a premature fame complex – a
Fate of four-year plan rests on coach’s big selection calls against country of his birth A quarter-final exit beats a pool-stage one, but only just, given the resources poured into this
problem with some previous England sides.
But there is no avoiding here in this World Cup outpost what Jones was hired to do. The often underrated work undertaken by Stuart Lancaster to solve the conundrum of England’s perennial underachieving was abandoned overnight because of results. Twickenham’s rulers were mortified by the 2015 nosedive and went looking for the opposite of Lancaster.
This match – more than any of Jones’s 48 games – tests that decision in the white heat of an 80-minute clash. Everything is on the line. A semi-final appearance might produce a “gallant failure” that could be finessed into a near-miss. Reaching the final in Yokohama would certainly afford Jones the luxury of deciding whether he wanted to stay on. But a quarter-final defeat by a side England have beaten six times in a row, or eight times out of nine? In that scenario, events would gallop ahead to a point where public and media sentiment would decree Jones’s position was untenable.
This tie is a replay of the World Cup finals of 1991 (which Australia won) and 2003. It has the tang of personal rivalry between Jones and Michael Cheika and carries
on from where a fine Ashes series left off. England have barely registered on the story chart out here and have not been fully tested in wins over Tonga, the United States and Argentina.
So, as Jones appeared at a team hotel where the Christmas decorations are already out, you could feel a distinctly un-festive air settling in. Nobody could accuse him of playing safe with his starting XV – particularly the dropping of George Ford – or in the appearance in England’s camp of yet another Australian adviser, Ricky Stuart. “Well that’s a lovely story you’ve cooked up,” Jones replied to a question about Stuart. “Ricky and I are old mates, we’ve known each other for a long time. He presented jerseys to the Wallabies during my time as a Wallaby coach, I’ve known his strength and conditioning coach since 2007 and he wanted to come over and have a look at what we’re doing – and it’s as simple as that.”
Jones spent much of his news conference trying to persuade his audience that “finishers” are as important as “starters”. In other words – that Ford and George Kruis would retreat to the bench happy just to be part of the collective. We all know international sport does not work this way. England’s players still have faith in Jones’ decisions and they certainly respect his power. On the line in Oita, though, is his ability to win the defining games with a group of players who have lost, under the current coach, to five of the other seven quarter-finalists.
The Dublin Six Nations defeat in 2017, Scotland’s comeback from 31-0 down to draw 38-38 at Twickenham only seven months ago: there are plenty of reasons to doubt whether Jones can turn this crop of England players into world champions. Equally, there are reasons to think he can, starting with his experience in World Cups, England’s depth and the absence of a truly hot tournament favourite. If this is as far as Jones can take them, the cry for help in 2015 will return as a scream.