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There is blood in the water. Scarcely a day had passed after Eddie Jones’ dismissal by the RFU last Tuesday before questions began to circle like piranha in a schlock horror movie. Would Eddie return home? Will he come back to coach the Wallabies? The feeding frenzy has already reached epic proportions.
The man himself recently revealed that everything, including rugby league and the Wallabies, is back on the table:
“I’m open to looking at everything in rugby and I’ve made no secret of my wish to give the NRL a go, too. Nothing is off the table. Nothing. It’s all about the right job at the right time and I’ll look at it all.“
Let’s get one thing straight, right from the start. Jones should never have been sacked by the RFU. Dumping your head coach only nine months out from a World Cup when there is no ready-made replacement makes no sense at all.
Leicester’s Steve Borthwick is as close to an identifiable succession plan as it gets, but he would much prefer to take over the reins at the start of a new cycle, not at the end of an old one. There are plenty of logistical problems if Borthwick wants to take most of his staffers – Kevin Sinfield as defence coach, Aled Walters in Strength & Conditioning and Richard Wigglesworth as kicking guru have already been mooted – with him from Welford Road.
The Mid-landers will not be content to stand by idly as their coaching staff is gutted only seven months after it engineered a Premiership triumph against Saracens, against the backdrop of the most barren period in the club’s professional history.
The natural and right time for Jones to go was after the 2019 World Cup in Japan. The man himself had originally stated that one four-year cycle was enough, and I can reveal that all of the RFU’s planning under Stuart Lancaster had been geared to peak at that tournament.
England had won the Under-20s World Championship three times in four years between 2013 and 2016, and Stuart knew that the outstanding crop of young players harvested from those successes would mature in time for the 2019 tournament. All the national plans were fine-tuned towards that end.
The team was already primed to be weaponised by a coach of Jones’ stature and ability. The task after the high watermark had passed, was to build a new team rather than chug along with the products of the past. Historically,Jones has proven to be far less effective as a coach building a new side from scratch, than he has been redirecting an established one in a new direction.
That is what happened with the Wallabies early in the noughties, and the pattern was repeated with England. Jones’ win rate in the first cycle up until the 2019 World Cup was 74%, but from 2020 onwards it dropped away to 50%, against opponents among either the home nations (Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France) or from the Rugby Championship (New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina).
Are the conditions right for Jones to return to the Wallabies? In a recent interview, RA chairman Hamish McLennan gave off a positive frisson:
“We’ve got Dave Rennie in place but we need to think how we can weaponise these recent events for Australia if Eddie wants to come home. Is Australia ready for Eddie? He is the prodigal coaching son. For the most part, people love him.”
The very next day, idea translated to action and Jones and McLennan were speaking on the phone together. McLennan again: “Actually I spoke to him yesterday. It’s all pretty high-level and it’s about really getting a sense of where his head is at given the drama of last week.”
If it sounds very much like an idea ready to materialise, the how, and the when are still murky: straightforward replacement for Rennie as head coach, or addition to his existing support group? Before the tournament in France, or after it is all over?
About one month ago Jones contacted me out of the blue, with a view to arranging a meeting. From the gist of our email conversation, it became clear that he was looking for new ideas, and searching for new trends in the game. The dialogue also orbited around the selection in the England midfield, and the question of whether young Marcus Smith and veteran Owen Farrell could combine effectively together at numbers 10 and 12.
Eddie needed a spark. The straightforward translation from league, via the recruitment of ex-Leaguers Anthony Seibold, Martin Gleeson, and Jon Clarke as his support coaches had clearly not provided it. Seibold was a bust as defence guru and Gleeson had not found a way to yoke Farrell and Smith together on attack. It got to the point that ex-League wing and media pundit Brian Carney asked, with some relish “Do you not think he [Eddie] is bored of rugby union?”
Replacing Rennie with Jones as head honcho would represent a huge risk for McLennan at this stage of proceedings. It would reunite him with Scotty Wisemantel, with whom he forged a successful attacking partnership in the first World Cup cycle, but it might set him dead against the Brumbies’ coaching dynamic represented by Dan McKellar and Laurie Fisher, who currently appear to set the mood in the Wallabies coaching group.
Ex-Wallaby flanker Simon Poidevin suggested a more modest consultancy role:
“I think RA have made it clear they respect Dave Rennie taking the team through to the 2023 World Cup.
“That doesn’t stop a guy of Eddie’s experience, like he did [at the 2007 World Cup] with South Africa, coming in to provide his expertise.
“His most valuable input would be a sounding board for Dave Rennie, and his relatively young coaching staff. He’s been through it all. He knows the challenges of knockout tournaments.”
Whatever the role, the basics of the situation remain. As a coach Jones is temporarily becalmed, he has run out of ideas. This is especially important for an Australian side which, unlike its forebears, has yet to learn the art of multi-phase attack. Would the revived partnership with Wisemantel re-ignite his rugby animus, or create more division within the coaching group?
England circa 2019 had two tried-and-trusted midfield combinations they could put on the field: either Owen Farrell at number 10, with Manu Tuilagi and Henry Slade in the centres outside him; or George Ford as the primary navigator, with ‘Faz’ and Manu at 12 and 13 respectively. The first started the quarter-final against Australia, the second featured in the win over the All Blacks the following week.
That certainty was a far cry from the floundering of the ‘Faz-and-Marcus’ show upon which English hopes were pinned in 2023. When I pointed out that Smith tended to get swallowed up by the intensity and dominance of Farrell’s on-field personality where Ford would hold his ground, Eddie did not disagree. Far from it.
In a recent Coach’s Corner, I illustrated what midfield imbalance looks like. Now, let’s roll back the clock to the 2019 semi-final in Yokohama, to see what the Eddie and ‘Wisey’ can achieve positively with the right building blocks in place.
There was no doubt about who was in control of the English offense from the start of the match. It was not Owen Farrell, but George Ford, and there was never any question of him being over-ruled at first receiver:
As at Twickenham in the game versus the Springboks two weeks ago, Owen Farrell is cleaning out over the top of a midfield run by Manu Tuilagi on first phase, but Ford is in charge on third. Where Smith disappears from the play, Ford demands the ball on the gain-line:
When play bounces back in from touch Ford is running the show, calling the two forwards in front to split and create a tunnel for the ball to go direct to 10, ready for another stretch to the far side of the field:
On the very next play, Ford was at it again, over-calling to take an offload from Kyle Sinckler and penetrate right under the shadow of the New Zealand posts.
Tuilagi finished off the move a couple of phases later, and that set the tone not only for the game as a whole, but for Ford’s control of proceedings in particular. He took the ball at first receiver four times (to Farrell’s none) in the course of that sequence, and overcalled from the forward pod in front twice.
The ‘over-call’ is an experienced outside-half’s speciality: it what he does when he sees the right area for attack materialising elsewhere and overrules a collision run by the forwards:
Even though the ball behind from Sinckler is inaccurate, Ford turns water into wine, shooting another beautiful long pass off his left hand to Watson, with Faz an interested bystander.
Ford’s ability to identify opportunities, make play on the ad-line and demand the ball from his forwards imparted momentum to England attacks throughout the first half:
The England number 10 twice overcalls on Billy Vunipola, and Farrell is always the second player in the attack, never the first. It is a complete reversal of the scenario that arose between Farrell and Smith in 2022, and that more than anything cooked Eddie’s goose with the RFU.
The key characters in the England coaching booth at Yokohama could find themselves in some important new national roles at the World Cup in France:
Wisey is on the right, Eddie is the man-in-the-middle with ‘Borthers’ at the back of the bus. It may yet be a snapshot of some coaching upheavals waiting to happen before France 2023.
Summary
The prodigal son may indeed be ready to return home to Australia, but it is far from clear whether he will be welcomed back uncritically, and with open arms into the bosom of the Wallaby family.
Judging by the lyrical noises emerging from RA, McLennan almost certainly would, Scott Wisemantel might. Dave Rennie, Dan McKellar and Laurie Fisher would probably be less sure – somewhere between uncertain and unlikely.
Jones’ coaching personality can be by turns creative and divisive, and motivational for better or worse. The more concrete question could well turn out to be whether he, in conjunction with Wisemantel can transform Australia’s attack structure, and their game-management from number 10.
By the end of 2022, the well of offensive ideas for Eddie’s England had well and truly run dry. With two established midfield trios to call upon up until 2019, Jones was set fair for a 70% plus win rate; with George Ford removed from the reckoning after the World Cup, it dropped by 20% and the midfield became a selection minefield.
The season witnessed five different combinations at 10, 12 and 13 over 12 games. Marcus Smith was the only constant but he cut a more peripheral figure at the end than he did it the beginning. The waters for the Wallaby midfield are every bit as muddied, especially when Quade Cooper is not around.
Like it or not, strong personalities transform environments and there is a big question-mark hanging over Eddie’s ability to change a Dave Rennie-run team for the better. ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’? It is a devilish dilemma indeed.