It might be Alan Jones, after all

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 26 Nov 2007 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

14 Have your say



When Alan Jones put his hand up to become the Wallaby coach I insisted that he wouldn’t get the job.

There were three strikes against him in my view. First, he couldn’t do the Wallaby job and continue with his radio requirements. Second, the last time he’d put his hand up, before Rod Macqueen was appointed, John O’Neill had chopped it off. And third, although his record is the second-best of all Wallaby coaches, after Macqueen, that was over 20 years ago and rugby coaching is a different game now.

Since this fearless prediction was made things have changed. Jones has announced that if he were made coach he’d give up his radio job. The rift between Jones and O’Neill seems to have been healed, although there is no hard proof of this. And something of a momentum has been generated in favour of Jones.

This momentum has been created by Jones’ own persuasiveness. He has made a compelling case for himself. I know from personal experience how persuasive he can be. I went down to the launch of a two-volume book on Australian rugby once and was talked (by Jones) into buying a $200 copy of a book I didn’t really want to read, or have ever read. So he would have been very persuasive at the meeting with the selection panel.

Jones’ mates in the media, most of them rugby league people, have been very insistent on his appointment as coach with Roy Masters and Ray Chesterton, influential old-timers, supporting Jones to the hilt.

There is a feeling in Australian rugby, too, that the plot has been lost. Jones has presented himself as something of a Moses destined to lead the rugby tribe out of the wilderness. Even Nick Farr-Jones has expressed this sort of view. I was chatting to a former Wallaby and specialist coach a day or so ago and he agreed with me that Jones’ attraction was his influence with sponsors and his pitch that he can revitalise the game.

I believe that if this is the belief then Jones should be offered the job as chairman of selectors. He would have considerable influence. He could still keep his radio job. He wouldn’t have to coach, which he can’t be expected to do 20 years on. But he would be there for the big picture.

The problem with making predictions in matters like this is that a person is inclined to predict what he believes should happen, which is not necessarily what will happen.

With my memory of Jones’ tendency to be divisive and hostile to anyone perceived as anything but an adoring supporter, l believe that giving him the Wallabies would be a bad thing for Australian rugby. I’m not sure, either, whether making him chairman of selectors is a good thing either. But it is the lesser of the two evils and brings Jones within the rugby tent rather than being outside it and dumping on it from there.

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