Can Eddie’s jaded army raise one more charge to glory?
NICK CAIN TALKS TO ENGLAND’S HEAD COACH ABOUT HIS SIX NATIONS HOPES
IF Eddie Jones sees any Six Nations storm clouds on the horizon he’s not saying so. The Jones message is that England are the reigning champions and are going on the hunt, with the pretenders to their title the quarry.
Forget that the Premiership clubs have all but fizzled out in Europe before the quarter-finals, or that many of his key England players are either injured, or knackered. Ignore the absence of Billy Vunipola, Nathan Hughes, Elliot Daly, Joe Marler, Ellis Genge, and James Haskell, and dismiss any talk that half his squad are running-onempty after the Lions tour.
There are no get-out clauses according to the England coach, and any suggestion that the centrally-contracted Irish – who are strongly fancied to supplant his crew – have managed their players better, and are peaking at the right time, is brushed aside.
If Joe Schmidt’s decree that the Irish provinces rest their Lions for the first two months of the season sees them with their dander up compared to their English counterparts – who were pressed into service by their clubs after only a couple of weeks grace – so what? Jones believes that the Red Rose men will rise to the challenge, however steep.
It’s hard not to warm to the overour-dead-bodies defiance from Jones, but the overwhelming sense is that his third season will be the toughest he has faced.
Ireland are already the only side to have lowered England’s colours under the Aussie’s tutelage, and with Scotland resurgent under Gregor Townsend, Wales improving, Italy better organised, and a new French dawn following Jacques Brunel’s appointment as coach, their Six Nations opponents are stronger than before.
My hunch after watching Saracens, Bath, Wasps, Leicester, Harlequins and Northampton fall away in the European Cup is that the fatigue factor is a reality for England – and if Jones can pick them up he will not so much have defied the odds as worked a minor miracle.
When Jones announced his squad this week for the relatively benign tournament opener against Italy in Rome he talked at one stage about a player’s body language being an important component in his selection policy.
Bewildered and deflated are the most apt descriptions for the body language among most of his England hopefuls after their battering in Europe last weekend.
Jones insists there will be no knock-on from club rugby into the Six Nations, but while an elite competition like the European Cup is not incontrovertible evidence of a downturn, it remains a pretty persuasive indicator.
By the same token, defeat at club level may not destroy a Test player’s confidence, but it also does nothing to build it. There is a counter-argument that England’s autumn ledger of three wins from three – which took Jones to new heights with a record of 22 wins from 23 – means that his squad, despite the arrival of eight uncapped newcomers, will not be lacking in self-belief.
Set against that, Argentina and Samoa were at a low ebb, and the victory over Australia was not as convincing as the 30-6 scoreline suggested. It owed everything to a late three-try flourish inspired by Danny Care’s super-sub contribution, and while the England finishing was clinical the Wallabies exposed fault lines that Wales, Ireland and Scotland will be looking to exploit in the Six Nations.
Jones refuses to play the fatigue card. When I suggested to him that Mako Vunipola looked weary during the Saracens game against the Ospreys he responded with a pep talk which went like this:
“Yes, he looked tired, but he rebounds quickly. He loves rugby, and if we were to take him out of rugby he’d be sad. Look, he’s not the happiest bloke in the world anyway, so he loves playing. He was probably a 6 out of 10 in the Ospreys game, but you can’t expect these guys every week to be an 8 out of 10. It is just unrealistic. You have to allow them to drop sometimes – but he never drops to 3 out of 10.”
Jones continued: “That is a great thing. Even when Mako is tired he is still fighting and doing the best for his team. I thought his defensive effort against the Ospreys was absolutely outstanding. He did look tired, but he will be all right. He will get a nice feed, a bit of boxing, and a bit of sun, and he will have a half-smile. I think Billy got all the happy genes…”
Jones conceals any concerns that the dip in the fortunes of double European champions Saracens points to the core of his squad – the
jaded. no affects “It’s blueprint He individual. Some players are players. argues for the way fatigue also that there is jumping have definitely out of got somefatigue their skins . Others about them, and we have this week coming up to try and look after them individually, just like we did in November. Some players will be on special programmes the whole week. But we only have them for a certain period of time, and we have to play Test matches. So if they are not jumping out of their skinsthen they won’t be playing
Jones makes it clear that next week’s training camp in POrtugal
will be fierce: “The first three days will be like a mini pre-season. So they won’t be doing much rugby – they will be doing some base running and base lifting, and some base tactical work, before they get into the team work. So, it will be a completely different camp than they have experienced in the past.”
He also gives short shrift to the lack of rigour in English rugby’s approach to training. “It is always intense. You don’t get anywhere in life doing things easy. I have never seen any team in the world who wins consistently that trains soft. I don’t understand that in English rugby. I really struggle with (the idea) that when you train hard you are ‘beasting’ the player. It is a contradiction of terms. Because the game is hard, the game tests you all the time. So, if you don’t prepare for that, how do you expect to win? Have nice soft training sessions, and you can’t win.”
This brings Jones to the characteristics he sees as indispensable – mental and physical fortitude. ‘Toughness’ is a word that Jones gives a thorough working over, especially when he talks about selection. He says it is a crucial factor in four of the newcomers selected in the squad for the Italy match.
He describes Lewis Boyce, the 21year-old Harlequins loose-head, as one of those players who has not had things easy. “I won’t go into his background, but he’s had a tough life...I like his attitude.”
He hails the Newcastle flanker Gary Graham as “a good, tough boy”, and has dubbed the abrasive Bath hooker Tom Dunn as the “Butcher’s Boy” following an apprenticeship in the meat trade. He says of Zach Mercer, the 20-yearold Bath back rower, “he’s always been gifted, now he’s doing the tough things”.
Jones reveals that he considers the player development system in England to be a great strength, including detailed profiles on young players compiled by logistics manager Charlotte Gibbons and team manager Richard Hill.
Asked if there have been any players he has liked the look of but whose backgrounds put him off, Jones responded: “Definitely, if I felt they were too soft.”
“Characteristics Jones sees as indispensable are mental and physical fortitude”
There are occasions, however, when it seems micro-management can obscure what’s staring us in the face. Sometimes what a coach sees with his own eyes in match play is the clearest measure of a player’s character and capacity to reach the heights, not what a dossier says.
The England coach’s explanation of his selection of young players like Mercer, Graham, and Boyce ahead of immensely durable, consistently high-performing Premiership pros like Exeter flanker Don Armand and his loosehead club mate Ben Moon, is another marker.
“It is a bit like a race-horse trainer going to a yearling sale – there are certain things you are looking for. I look for physically tough players. The first thing I try to find out about a player is their background, where they are from, what they have done, how they carry themselves, their physical size, the way they look at other players on the field. There are all these bits and pieces.
“Don’t get me wrong, club rugby is important. But you can be a very good club rugby player and it does not make you a good international player. An international player is tougher – international rugby is much tougher.”
Jones says his strike rate in identifying players of Test-match calibre is high, and that players he misses who later prove him wrong are a rarity.
“There are not many times, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this job. I wouldn’t have coached (at this level) for 21 years if I kept on making those mistakes.”
Jones’ exceptional results during his England tenure back up his claim. However, like most international coaches, his selection decisions are not infallible.
Among the questionable calls he made as Australia coach were the promotion of three props, Bill Young, Al Baxter and Matt Dunning, who were a long way short of international calibre. Young managed to duck and dive his way through 46 Tests, including the 2003 World Cup final, but luck eventually ran out for Baxter and Dunning when they were dismantled by Andrew Sheridan at Twickenham in 2005 as the Wallaby scrum imploded.
Jones was also criticised for sticking with players for too long before he was sacked as Wallaby coach following a seven-match losing run in 2005, with his staunch support of captain George Gregan frequently the focus.
The parallels with Dylan Hartley’s tenure as Jones’ chosen man are there, but they come to an abrupt halt because, despite a long run of military medium club form, the Northampton hooker has lost just once as England captain.
This Six Nations campaign will either confirm Jones as one of the great England coaches and selectors, or reveal that the veneer of infallibility is an illusion and he is still capable of making mistakes.