SNIDE BEFORE THE FALL?
Eddie Jones has succeeded in making England loathed again but it all feels like too much, too soon...
IN preparing for their tour of Australia last summer, Eddie Jones showed his England players footage of the Bodyline Ashes. This was the 1932-33 series made infamous by the tactics of the English tourists. They went after the Australian batsmen and the peerless Don Bradman in particular, through the aggressive technique of their fast bowlers.
On their journey to Australia, the English approach was finalised and their hostile attitude extended to the order from captain Douglas Jardine that Bradman be referred to only as ‘the little b ***** d’.
The approach was successful, but it was also an inversion of the usual relationship: it is Australian teams that have traditionally revelled in the role of unapologetic usurpers of the accepted order.
Australia has defined itself, through sport and much else, as a place free of the hierarchical hangups found in England. They discovered another way to succeed.
The triumph of Jones as England rugby coach has been to suffuse his squad with that spirit. England’s is the richest rugby union in the world, with turnover exceeding £200 million for the first time two years ago. Yet, despite being resourced by this powerhouse, Jones’s England at their best have played with the defiance of underdogs set against an unfair world.
They defy the millions of pounds and the accumulated superiority of decades as one of the game’s great powers to play with the hunger and the aggression of outsiders. It was on their wildly successful tour of Australia that this way of playing proved most fruitful.
A week ago, that tactic ran out of usefulness.
In cribbing about the tactics used by Italy to try and survive in a Test at Twickenham, Jones sounded more English than the English themselves.
Italy hadn’t a chance of winning that match, and their coach Conor O’Shea knew it as well as anyone else. What they needed to do was try and remain relevant in the contest for as long as possible.
There followed their tactics at rucks that left the English players bamboozled and Jones behaving with distasteful superiority. Before the game, he had crowed about taking Italy ‘to the cleaners’.
He was left leaning in his outrage on another cricket analogy.
‘We saw a Trevor Chappell game of rugby today,’ he cried. In a oneday international in 1981, New Zealand needed a six off the final ball to draw with Australia. To remove any possibility of this, Australian bowler Trevor Chappell rolled his delivery underarm.
It was mean-spirited and cowardly, but within the rules. What Italy did last Sunday was the product of imaginative thinking; it was a brave tilt at survival.
In the meanness of his reaction, Jones has returned England to a position they have not occupied for almost a decade and a half now. They are loathed again. Winning teams often are, but not since the World Cup-winning side clinically assembled by Clive Woodward has an England rugby side been so easy to dislike. Their unpopularity in this country was kindled by the red carpet debacle at Lansdowne Road in 2003 when Martin Johnson refused to budge and the Irish team were forced to line up and greet their president standing on grass.
Since then, through the years presided over by Andy Robinson, Brian Ashton and then Johnson the coach, England slumped. The quality of players dropped but so did the excellence of their coaching. Stuart Lancaster improved it but he also tried to make England great by trusting in decency and humility.
Since replacing Lancaster, Jones has not been burdened by those concerns. He revels in being a hard talker interested in nothing but success, and he has delivered – relying on the Australian virtues detailed above.
Perhaps the inevitable end-point was a return to an England who are easy to dislike.
But Jones should watch his step. Woodward’s England justified everything by becoming the best team in the world. When Johnson thrust the Webb Ellis trophy towards the sky, even in his greatest moment appearing to scowl, the complaints of their detractors didn’t matter.
The current England are nowhere near that level, yet. Jones has not led them against New Zealand, which is the defining challenge for any Test side.
He has done extremely well, and England are the deserved favourites for the championship. Up to seven days ago, everything Jones did worked.
Invoking the Bodyline Ashes last summer irritated Australians, but Jones justified it by whitewashing the Wallabies.
The ungracious attitude to Italy was a misstep, though, and the world waits to see if it was the start of a stumble.