Jones: Grieving over, time to go again
Head coach’s boot-camp helped lift his despair ‘Players tell me whether to continue,’ says Australian
Eddie Jones last night revealed how he had gone through five weeks of “grieving” after England’s devastating defeat by South Africa in the World Cup final, and how he lifted himself from the depths of despair on a five-day boot camp in Japan.
As Jones prepares to press the reset button, with England taking on France in Paris today in the Guinness Six Nations Championship, he spoke of how the side’s no-show, after their astonishing semi-final defeat of the All Blacks, had left him needing the break in Okinawa to “cleanse” himself of despondent thoughts.
Jones, 60 last Thursday, said: “I had three weeks’ holiday in Japan, of which one week I didn’t do any rugby at all.
“I did crossfit three times a day with my wife, twice in the morning, once at night. It’s ridiculous at our age. It was a bit of a cleansing, then I came back and was ready to go, ready to rip in.
“You don’t have to think. You just get in there and rip in. I love being a 60-year-old competing against 40-year-olds, seeing if I can beat them. I started last and got into the middle of the class by the end. Mrs Jones is fit!”
The head coach is contracted through to 2021 rather than the next World Cup, but insisted that he would not have carried on at all if he did not feel that he could improve the team.
The England head coach has attempted to ease the disappointment of losing the final by laying down the challenge to his side of becoming “the greatest that the game has ever seen … and to stop the nation”, with the majesty of their play.
Jones believes that the current benchmark of such sporting excellence is to be found at Anfield, and he is urging his team to become the “Liverpool of rugby” as they prepare for their first match since the Springboks debacle.
“We want to have an effect on how the nation sees rugby,” said Jones as his team went through their final paces following arrival in Paris from an eightday training camp in the Algarve, where uncapped Northampton fullback, George Furbank, impressed enough to start.
“The number of football fans that have come up to me and said they watched England in the World Cup semi-final against the All Blacks gives you an indication. When you play that sort of rugby, people want to watch it.
“It’s like Liverpool now. Everyone wants to watch Liverpool because they play with that ferocity. They play with desire and they never get beaten. We want people to speak about us like that. We want to see it in the French game.”
Of his own contract, Jones said: “The players tell you whether you should continue or not. They will let me know. If the players play well and the team is going well, then maybe you should continue. If the team’s indifferent, then maybe they need a change.
“The RFU only want me to continue if they think I can improve the team. The contract is important from a legal point of view, but they want to win and I want to win. I was only ever going to continue if I thought that I could keep improving the team.
“There is more immediacy in what we want to do than the World Cup in 2023. We trained better on Thursday than we have ever trained in the first week of a preparation. I couldn’t be more pleased with the way the team have prepared for this game, their focus, their attention to detail, their togetherness and enthusiasm has been outstanding. We have approached it as in the need to freshen ourselves up, because we are going to another level. And it all starts now.”
France, meanwhile, suffered a serious blow last night with wing Damien Penaud ruled out through injury, with La Rochelle’s Vincent Rattez coming in to the side.