I just can’t wait for Eddie’s next All Blacks broadside
You can’t help but love Eddie Jones. After the start he has made as England coach it would be easy to sit back and enjoy just a few of the plaudits, but that isn’t his style.
Instead he has put the pressure on his coaching team, started a mediumterm psychological battle with the All Blacks, and talked up his England men ahead of the Lions tour.
Referring to the tour of Australia, Jones commented that while they were pleased with the results – he’s clearly mastering English under-statement – they hadn’t coached well enough! As a result, he’s wheeling in coaches from the recently successful Olympics Team GB, to see what can be learned.
Similarly, Jones talked up his England players, saying at least 15 of them should be in Warren Gatland’s Lions’ party. Who knows which players he has in mind, but dangling the Lions carrot has to be a great motivator for his squad, as well as gently pressurising Gatland.
It was, however, his comments on New Zealand rugby that attracted most comment, with their Press latching on to his every word. The gap between England and the All Blacks has closed – it’s now three per cent apparently, although goodness knows how that figure came about.
It was a shot across New Zealand bows, and he added that the All Blacks aren’t unbeatable, and he knows how to do it!
Of course he wouldn’t tell us what their “significant weaknesses” were, although he promised he would in 2018 after England next play, and presumably beat them!
Wonderful stuff, and it has surely had its desired effect, with Steve Hansen making the point that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that his team has flaws.
Of course, that phrase was a headline writer’s dream, and it rapidly became the mildly insulting: Eddie Jones is no rocket scientist!
Jones turned the screw a bit more when he said that New Zealand controlled the rugby world – “every law that’s changed, New Zealand drive it”. In fact, he went on to praise New Zealand’s smartness, highlighting that they develop their coaches, and then send them north to round off their education.
He captured the headlines, with the Aussie and Saffer Press effectively asking why their coaches haven’t been smart enough to rumble the All Blacks, and with the New Zealand Press wondering whether Jones really has found the silver bullet that can beat them! My bet is that Eddie had a good chuckle at the reaction and is already working on the next salvo to fire in this ‘psych-ops’ campaign!
SANZAR have made an unholy mess of the Super Rugby structure: ludicrous travelling and almost incomprehensible, and loathed play-off system.
Things are so bad they’ve resorted to employing a firm of management consultants to help them get out of their self-created mess.
In my experience, these are the guys who turn up on the battlefield to bayonet the wounded, and then charge a fortune for doing it. Their presence is also an admission that the business has failed.
Last week they revealed that they’d had a meeting attended by over 80 ‘stakeholders’, and it was a bit like when the Prime Minister visits some dodgy battle zone, and we’re told about it after it happens.
And the comments of SANZAR CEO, Andy Marinos, were riddled with management speak: “tournament deliverables”; “onboard feedback from coaches and CEOs at the coalface of the competition”; “further analysis and inputs…as an outcome of the workshop.”
If you were a Super Rugby fan, would this fill you with confidence?
The debate about forward passes rumbles on and on, but how difficult does this really need to be?
At one time forward meant forward, and everyone could understand that, but the laws now have the additional bit about the arms of the player passing the ball, moving towards the opposing team’s dead ball line. In other words, it’s OK to pass the ball forward, as long as your hands are moving backwards: total tosh.
The game is becoming nigh on impossible to officiate, and lunacy such as redefining what forward means, is just plain daft.