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Eddie Jones is not short on gamesmanship. He is the master of the provocative statement.
He was at his best when he insisted, in the glow of England’s Six Nations Grand Slam, that England could win the June series against the Wallabies 3-0.
Then with that characteristic impish, naughty boy smile on his face he went on to explain how much he’d enjoy spending the week after the series in Australia gloating over his team’s victory.
Like most rugby pundits around the world, either in the UK or down under, I was actually underwhelmed by England’s achievement. I don’t believe that England will win the series, not 3-0 or even 2-1. On what England showed in their Six Nations triumph, the team will exceed expectations if it wins one Test.
Much of the play in the 2016 Six Nations tournament, including England’s performances, was mediocre compared with the standard set by the stronger teams in this season’s Super Rugby tournament.
To take one example, the Chiefs incredible 30-26 victory over the Jaguares at Velez Sarsfield involved a quality of attacking and defensive rugby by both sides that was superior to that of any two teams in the Six Nations.
We need to remember, too, that all the teams in the Six Nations were pathetic performers in the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament, especially England.
None of the Six Nations teams contested the Rugby World Cup semi-final. The all-southern hemisphere nations semi-finals was a Rugby World Cup first. France was defeated by a T20 cricket score by the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup quarter-final.
England did not even make the Rugby World Cup finals, the first time a host nation has not progressed out of the group.
The important point to note here is that 13 of the England Rugby World Cup squad was in the 23 for the final match of the 2016 Six Nations against France.
One of other point, too, is that Eddie Jones was fortunate that his England side had a favourable draw for this year’s Six Nations tournament. England struggled to beat Scotland at Murrayfield 15-9. Then they overwhelmed Italy at Rome 40-9.
The next two matches, England’s toughest in the tournament, were played at its fortress, Twickenham.
In the last 16 years, England has lost only six Six Nations matches at Twickenham. So it is to be expected that England defeated Wales 25-21 at Twickenham and Ireland were defeated 21-10.
And in the last match of the tournament, England defeated a poor French side 31-21 in Paris.
Would this England side defeat Wales in Cardiff? I don’t think so. Would England have defeated Ireland in Dublin? Possibly not.
Constant readers of The Roar who believe that this is just old Spiro venting off against northern hemisphere rugby need to take notice of what the British rugby commentators are saying.
Brian Moore, the admittedly grumpy former hooker and multiple Grand Slam winner with England, has described the 2016 Six Nations tournament as having “plenty of effort, close results, yet a dearth of real quality.”
And Stuart Barnes, generally supportive of the northern hemisphere rugby has admitted that the tournament was “average in the extreme.”
Sean Coppack, writing for The Independent, has compared the statistics of the 2012 Six Nations, which was played after a strong northern hemisphere showing in Rugby World Cup 2011, with the statistics of the 2016 Six Nations tournament (after five rounds in both tournaments).
| Team | Errors (2012) | Errors (2016) |
| England | 59 | 125 |
| France | 57 | 116 |
| Ireland | 50 | 113 |
| Italy | 49 | 128 |
| Scotland | 54 | 116 |
| Wales | 40 | 102 |
Coppack makes this observation from these statistics: “This huge increase in the number of errors (this year) is a terrible indictment of the basic ball handling skills of of the northern hemisphere sides at present. The numbers highlight an area in their play which is lagging significantly behind the southern hemisphere power houses of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and now Argentina.”
When the statistics of England’s play in the 2016 Six Nations tournament is compared with the year earlier (2015) there is good evidence to suggest that England’s Grand Slam can be attributed in large measure to the weakness of the opposition rather than to its own resurgence.
Daniel Schofield in The Telegraph (UK) in an article headed The Six Changes Eddie Jones made which led to Six Nations success noted that the main change from the austere, restricted and mechanical regime installed by the former coach Stuart Lancaster was that Jones was prepared to unleash his dogs of war in the tackle.
Jones’ England contested the breakdown with a ferocity that was missing under Lancaster. The side still lacks a genuine number 7 but Jones compensated for this by encouraging every player to be a “jackal,” a stealer of possession from the opposing sides.
The key statistic here is that England had 21 jackals forcing turnovers in the 2016 Six Nations compared with only 13 in 2015.
England’s set piece, too, was significantly better with a new coaching staff than it was under Lancaster. The scrum success rate was 92 per cent and the lineout 90 per cent. In the three key matches against Ireland, Wales and France, England lost only one lineout out of 37 while pilfering nine opposition throws.
This collective aggression and skill at the breakdown and in the set pieces gave England an obvious edge over the other Six Nations sides.
Jones must take credit for introducing what I would an effective mongrel attitude to England’s play. He also simplified England’s game plan. The improvement in England’s set pieces is significant. England also played to score tries rather than force penalties.
As a counter to this, it must be conceded that England gave away 15 more penalties in its total of 63 this year than it gave away in the 2015 Six Nations tournament.
In effect, though, the Jones strategy was designed for England to win the battle of the advantage line and from that advantage line strength impose a match-winning dominance over its opponents. The method was clearly successful.
Billy Vunipola became an 80-minute player with the task of trucking the ball forward. He crossed the gain line 226 times in the Six Nations tournament. This is eight times more than the total gain line wins by England in the 2015 Six Nations tournament.
The backs had simple but effective plays to exploit England’s pacy back three. You could see this clarity in the clear-headed way young George Ford led England around the field from the number 10 position.
George Kruis, who did not play in the 2015 Six Nations, was the outstanding and dominant second rower in the tournament. An injury to Joe Launchbury allowed Jones to bring in Maro Itoje as Kruis’ partner. This combination has the potential to be the equivalent for England of the Botha-Matfield Springboks great pairing.
As Schofield points out, Launchbury was the only enforced replacement Jones had to make. This lack of injuries in a squad during a Six Nations tournament is “almost unprecedented.” Napoleon once said, Schofield noted, “that luck is the most important attribute of any general, and in this case coach.”
I am a great believer that in sport as in life, you make your luck. Eddie Jones is not a lucky coach. He is one of the most successful coaches in world rugby right now.
His task after taking over England was to win the Six Nations tournament. Few of the pundits in the UK gave him or his team much chance of achieving this. Sir Ian McGeechan, for instance, predicted that Wales would win the tournament.
England has won the tournament. This is only the 13th time that England has won a Grand Slam in the 108 years since France came into the tournament. It is 13 years, too, since the last England Grand Slam victory.
Eddie Jones deserves all the applause being heaped upon him for what he has done with the shattered, lacklustre England side he inherited.
He is right, too, to tell his players that “if we’re going to beat Australia in Australia, we’ve got to have a completely physical, aggressive team … We’ve got to take a side down there to play Bodyline.”
And his opening shot of the Australia campaign has already been fired with warning to the squad that triumphed in Paris that no one should take their place for granted when the Tests in Australia are played.
I think Jones is hinting here that changes in centres and on the flanks, especially the need to play a genuine number 7, are going to be made.
So Michael Cheika must not under-estimate the challenge that the Eddie Jones England side is going to present his Wallabies.
To my mind, Cheika’s greatest weakness as a coach is that he is reluctant to bring on new players. He is already talking about bringing back Will Genia from Europe, for instance, to play in the Test series.
Madness!
Cheika needs to remember that no losing team in the final of a Rugby World Cup tournament has ever gone on and competed in the next final. Two winning finalists, Australia in 1999 and England in 2003 have gone on to losing in the next final, in 2003 and 2007. New Zealand has won back-to-back Rugby World Cup finals in 2011 and 2015.
This suggests to me that Cheika needs to start re-stocking his Wallabies squad with younger players rather than relying on players now well past their prime.
If he does this, I have no doubt that the Wallabies can win the series against England in June 3-0, or at worst 2-1.
One of the German generals in the First World War made the point that “war plans rarely survive the first contact of battle.” Gamesmanship, even when practised by a master like Eddie Jones, often suffers from the same fate.