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Opinion
That notoriously media shy coach of the Wallabies, Eddie Jones, joined that notoriously media shy former rugby league coach turned pundit, Phil Gould, for an intriguing chinwag on Friday in which the union man continued to fawn over the rival code.
Not since Tina Turner sang The Best has an outsider made such a song and dance about the merits of league.
As part of their chat, which is worth a look and streamed on Stan Sport, Jones continued to paint the picture of union being the game that needed to learn from league, saying rugby needed a “Packer revolution where the game changes a lot.”
A cynic might suggest that rugby has already had that and wasted it. Kerry Packer shook up cricket with World Series Cricket in 1977. That was 18 years before rugby’s version when the game turned professional, motivated by Packer himself after his failed bid to launch the World Rugby Championship.
But Jones insisted: “You’ve got to make that sacrifice to spend that money to get the game right in 10 years’ time… And I think at some stage in rugby, there’s going to be like a Packer revolution where the game changes a lot. More money comes in and that will help develop the players. I think that will happen at some stage.”
If Rugby Australia had a dollar for every public utterance from their new boss in the past month, they could probably fix the game in 10 months, rather than years. (Not that we are complaining, for obvious reasons).
And a high proportion of those statements have hammered home his admiration for rugby league – its players, structure and coaches.
For start, he says rugby league is smashing union in development.
“The clubs have remained strong, but there hasn’t been that evolution to identify talent and bring that talent through,” Jones said.
“And that’s why rugby league’s killing rugby at that age group at the moment.
“We’ve got plenty of talented players here but they haven’t been identified and brought through quick enough.
“I think Australian rugby was strongest when we only had three Super Rugby teams and those teams were fairly settled and they ran like club teams. But things have changed a little bit with five teams and that sort of club mentality at each of those Super Rugby teams has probably been lost a little bit.
“And that’s the opportunity going forward to build that back up… I think it became too easy for a while in Australian rugby to play professional rugby with five teams.
“I think now we’re getting to the stage where it’s becoming more competitive and they’ll drive players to come through.”
He always had a thing for league players – working successfully with Mat Rogers, Wendell Sailor and Lote Tuqiri. Chatting to Gus, he restated his admiration for Cameron Murray – you could forgive the South Sydney for feeling like he’s being stalked by an obsessed would be suitor.
And he went all wistful when he spoke of the one who got away.
“Oh, we had Andrew Johns done mate, in 2005. We had him done, he was going to come. He would have made a hell of a difference,” Jones said.
(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
“(Billy) Slater would have been handy, that Cameron Murray would be pretty handy at 12… If you’re a State of Origin player in rugby league and you’re an outside back, you can definitely make it in rugby. And I think you know, Matty Rogers, Wendell (Sailor), Lote Tuqiri have all shown that, Andrew Walker.”
He’s close to rugby league coaches as well, using Anthony Seibold in his most recent gig in England and signing up Brett Hodgson – who missed out on the gig when Eddie got the sack.
He tried to lure Michael Maguire to the Wallabies but the Canberra Raiders assistant resisted. There are sure to be other league names on his wish list as he narrows in on his staff.
Laurie Fisher – as rugby as they come – announced his own departure on Twitter on Friday. It led to more speculation about which leaguies might be coming in to take his place.
“(Craig) Bellamy I’ve seen a few times, Wayne (Bennett), hopefully I’ll catch up to in Brisbane. But every time you meet them mate, and like I met you when I was a young coach coming through, the absolute jewels of knowledge that you get from those guys, you never forget,” said Jones.
“I think the standard of coaching in rugby league, generally, I reckon over the last 30 years, has really helped rugby. Because rugby league has been a fairly settled professional sport and the coaching has been of a high level.
“We’ve been able to certainly learn about defence systems and more recently, to some detriment, the attack system. Like I think rugby’s actually gone too far down the rugby league side now and we need to get back. Because rugby is a more instinctive game than rugby league because we don’t have the absolute structure in the game.
“But certainly we’ve been able to learn a lot from the coaching of rugby league.”
Jones was in Sydney last year when the State of Origin decider was played in Brisbane. He and the touring English media pack seemed in genuine awe at the brutality of that match – where three players were removed suffering head injuries within the opening three minutes. The codes stand in stark contrast in their approach to policing high shots.
“You go through periods where the sport was probably too unsafe and we allowed too much to go and the sport needs to get safer,” said Jones.
“And therefore, the equilibrium balance has changed too much to that way and I’m sure we’ll go back to more commonsense approach. I think the history of the world shows that people like gladiators.
“Like why is State of Origin so successful in league? Because people love seeing that, people still love seeing that and there’s a place for it.”