>> Nick Cain reports
Return of heavy brigade gives Jones reason to be happy
THERE is one thing you can bank on with Eddie Jones. Come injury hell, or a high watermark losing run like the one last season, he is unfailingly positive about England’s prospects. The other likelihood is that he will bowl a tactical googly just to keep it lively.
Those characteristics stood out again this week at Twickenham as the England coach announced a Six Nations squad which he emphasised was targeted specifically at the opening match against Ireland, and also the following game against France.
On the curved ball front he said he was considering employing Jack Nowell as an extra flanker, giving the Exeter wing the licence to come infield and compete at the breakdown because he has all attributes required to be a menace to the opposition.
Jones said also that despite the magnitude of having a tournament opener against the all-conquering Irish on their own turf, there were plenty of reasons to be cheerful. The first is that he has a squad which is approaching full strength for the first time in his tenure.
With the exception of losing Sam Underhill for the Six Nations due to ankle surgery, and co-captain Dylan Hartley’s absence due to a ‘grumbly’ knee, England look ready to rumble.
The timely return to fitness of the Saracens forward triumvirate of Billy and Mako Vunipola, and Maro Itoje is a significant boost. The same applies to the steady strides being made by Manu Tuilagi, especially as his return to action coincided with the arrival of wing Joe Cokanasiga on the Test stage in the autumn.
Tuilagi and Cokanasiga’s availability, along with Ben Te’o, gives England a formidable physical presence in the backline for the first time in the three years Jones has been in charge. There was sufficient evidence in the autumn to suggest it is a highly significant development ahead of the World Cup, and that this Six Nations will define just how game-changing an option it is for the Red Rose side.
The other element that stood out was a clear admission from the England coach that he had made a serious strategic mistake last season which undermined his team, and that will not be repeated this time.
When I asked Jones what lessons he took from last season’s slump from being Six Nations champions to finishing in fifth place, and what improvements he wanted to make, his response was that he was not at his sharpest, not least for underestimating the physical and mental demands of the Lions tour on his players.
Jones said: “First we didn’t focus on it enough and that was my fault. I was pushing ahead to doing things we wanted to do to be the best team in the world. Second, if I ever coach in a Six Nations again after a Lions tour I would take a totally different approach.”
He added that the size of the 17man England contingent in the 2017 Lions tour party made last season a minefield because they were not properly rested or prepared for the schedule facing them.
“If you have 17 players that basically have not had a pre-season you are in a difficult situation. It has a massive impact. I am not using that as an excuse, but you have got players who have basically come off a Lions tour and they are not ready to play rugby. I would definitely do things differently, but how I would do it I don’t know at the moment – but I would definitely be more focussed on winning the tournament.”
Responding to whether the main problem was his players being drained, or the lack of pre-season training, Jones said: “A bit of both. Pre-season recharges players. I was listening to the football last night and they were talking about the fact that all the other European countries have a winter break. A winter break gives them a rest, but it also gives them another pre-season which recharges their batteries.
“Rugby players are like machines, you have got to rest them at certain stages and then you have got to recharge them. Just resting is not good enough because they have got to be recharged to be equipped to play the game. So, our players did not have that opportunity. They had rest, but they did not recharge, and therefore you are always on the back foot.”
What is in his sights now is to do what the All Blacks could not in November – win in Dublin.
Jones recognises that two of the biggest impediments to achieving that are Irish fly-half supremo Johnny Sexton and his scrum-half accomplice Conor Murray. The quality of their tactical kicking and the effectiveness of Ireland’s kickchase harrying is second to none – and so too, in Sexton’s case, is his influence with referees according to Jones.
“I am sure he will be in the ref ’s ear. He is a reasonably big player and has got the Bat Phone to the referee. He is the only one allowed to pick up the red phone, so that gives you an advantage, and we have got to be good enough to counter that. When he talks the referee listens, and that is because of his status in the game. You earn that, and Richie McCaw was the same.”
Murray’s exceptional box-kicking in Munster’s rout of Gloucester had also registered on the Jones radar, and he made it clear that England will not give him the room for manoeuvre that the West Country club did.
“He was able to do that with a dinner suit on, wasn’t he? So maybe we will make sure he hasn’t got a dinner suit on.”
Jones presented a bare-bones analysis of where England will have to be at their best to beat the reigning Grand Slam champions: “Against Ireland there are two contests.
The reason they are good is they are good in the air – they can win the aerial co (also) win the ground contest.”
He revealed that the England coaches were borrowing from Aussie Rules (AFL) to improve their aerial skills following a recent trip Down Under. “We looked at lot at developing the craft of high ball catching. They got some good coachback ing ideas to comeback with. It is just developing that skill. It is one of the most important parts of the game.”
Another point of difference for the Irish, even against a side as accomplished as New Zealand, is their extreme effciency at the breakdown. Some of their clear-out technique has, nevertheless, been criticised, particularly when it comes to taking out players who are well away from the ruck, creating a cavernous gap for their next pick, and-drive.
Jones, however was unwilling to join the criticism . “I don’t think they are any worse than any number of teams at the moment. We have got a good Fench referee, (Jerome) Garces, for that game, and I think he is pretty good in that area.”
Jones’ reluctarce is probably because England gave away a buckwn etfuls of breakdown penalties last season and are in no position to lecture, despite a big improvement in the autumn. The England coach’s
quest for further gains explains his left-field idea of utilising Nowell as an auxiliary flanker.
Even though it has already drawn flak as an unnecessary exercise in tinkering from his old adversary Sir Clive Woodward, Jones insists he is serious, and that there is too little innovative thinking when it comes to getting an advantage at the breakdown.
Asked how long it would take for Nowell to be effective as a ruck rover, Jones said: “If I was to have a period of training time, which I do for the World Cup, and a period of games, you could certainly investigate that. To give you some background to it, it is something I have been thinking about for a long time, and I have done it before.”
He continued: “I took Tom Tombleson, our head of strength and conditioning, and Steve Borthwick, our senior assistant coach, down to Melbourne for five days to basically think about where we can take the game.
“The whole thing about a rugby team is that within your team you want to be predictable but to the opposition you want to be unpredictable. We spent a day with an ex-Australia hockey coach Ric Charlesworth, who won four World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, played Sheffield Shield cricket, is a doctor of medicine, and was a national government politician for 10 years. So, he is a person of quite high standing.
“We spent the whole day speaking to him about rugby and he just came up with these questions about how the game is played. He knows nothing about rugby, and just stimulated some great thought. It rejigged an old idea that I had that is worth looking at. Someone like Jack Nowell is such a good player that he could play a number of positions for us. Why not try it?”
When it was suggested to Jones that the last time England went into experimental mode with Sam Burgess at the 2015 World Cup it did not end well, Jones was not deflected.
“I don’t know about him mate. He could have been a great player... Jack Nowell plays Rugby Union, he is a rugby player so he knows everything about the breakdown. If you look at world rugby in terms of breakdown skills he would be one of the highest skilled players. We are not talking about a player that doesn’t understand the game: he is a player that understands the game and can play 13, 15, 11 now quite easily. It might be that at the end of the game he can play as a ninth forward for us. It gives you that flexibility.
“There are certain players born with a DNA that allows them to be more multi-positional. Jack is strong, stocky, and he’s quick. He’s potentially got the option of playing in the forwards and the backs.”
Jones added that the benefits of having nine forwards are worth exploring. “Our strength as a team is our forward pack, without a doubt, and how can we make our forward pack stronger, how can we find ways of getting an advantage over the opposition? That stimulated this thought pattern. It is a also a bit of fun which I think is important in the game.”
Jones signed off: “There are opportunities to maybe do things differently. The game has become very methodical... so, you have to look at how you can break that and add more to your team.”
Ireland and their wily coach Joe Schmidt are unlikely to see the Nowell project as anything more than a smokescreen, but at least there are not too many dull Press conferences in the Fast Eddie era.