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COMMENT: The worst thing Rugby Australia could do after their train wreck of a World Cup campaign is to sack Eddie Jones.
Jones stuffed up. No questions about that. This was the worst year statistically of Jones’ international career.
His selection was poor and the detail missing from the Wallabies’ game was dreadful, which was likely a result of the absence of any semblance of rugby intellect, but Rugby Australia’s powerbrokers must stand firm and back Jones.
In fact, Australian rugby should celebrate Jones’ innovation.
It might have brutally backfired on the world’s biggest stage, at a point in time when Australian rugby needed something, but it was innovation from a coach who recognised that conservatism was not going to work from a Wallabies side that had slid to tier-two status over the past decade.
If Jones wanted to protect his job, he would have rolled out the same tried and tested and failed international players who between 2016 and Jones taking over had won just 42 per cent of Tests.
A quarter-final berth would likely have resulted, perhaps a semi-final, but no one remembers semi-finalists.
Robbie Deans’ Wallabies made a semi-final and he was considered hopeless by half of Australia.
Michael Cheika’s side in 2015 got a lucky break in the quarter-final and made the final and he too was considered terrible.
Only World Cup champion coaches are remembered and, having won eight straight Tests over the Wallabies with England and 10 of 11 in total, Jones knew his home nation needed change when he took over in late January.
Jones’ appointments completely backfired.
The harsh reality is that while there were several assistant coaches in Australia who have promising futures and others with still more to offer before they hang up their whistles, these same Super Rugby coaches have failed to lead a single Super Rugby side to a final.
Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan with Wallabies coach Eddie Jones. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
Some have made semi-final appearances, most have missed the knockout stages altogether.
Ditto, the players representing the franchises.
With the vast majority of assistants committed to other campaigns, it’s more than likely that Jones, one of the deepest thinkers in the game with a track record of success at World Cups, believed a radical change was needed to give the Wallabies a chance of going deep in their “smash and grab” mission.
In the end it was all hat and no cattle, but it wasn’t because of a lack of innovation from a coach who has always thought about and seen the game differently to most.
Make no mistake, his plan failed. It blew up in his face in the most embarrassing moment of Jones’ career.
Indeed, the fact the Wallabies’ only tactic was to pass to Samu Kerevi in the midfield from scrums, and the monumental stuff up at the lineout when the forwards slipped over themselves despite having ample time to set up midway through the first half against Wales, showed up the side’s extraordinary lack of detail.
Jones, should he be sacked, has made a martyr of himself by ushering through change ahead of the 2025 Lions series and 2027 Rugby World Cup – the two biggest events in Australian rugby for the next two decades.
But a man who has led two nations to World Cup finals, including as recently as 2019 with a side who bombed out in the pool stage four years earlier, won one as an assistant with the Springboks in 2007, hasn’t become a bad coach overnight.
Rugby Australia has a history of chewing up and spitting out its coaches.
Simon Raiwalui and Mick Byrne barely received a phone call following the 2019 quarter-final defeat to Jones’ England in Japan.
It took months for them to know they had no place in Australian rugby.
Both men were architects of the Wallabies’ demise earlier this month, with Raiwalui the head coach of Fiji and Byrne the Fiji Drua’s head coach.
(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
Daryl Gibson, another person who might have struggled as a head coach but was considered a brilliant assistant coach, is Raiwalui’s assistant with Fiji.
Another, Brad Harris, will return to Australian rugby next year but helped the Fijians to Olympic gold in 2021 and is also an assistant with Fiji.
Cheika, who coached the Wallabies for five years, is Argentina’s coach and has led Los Pumas to back-to-back wins over Australia. He was also an assistant in 2020 when they had consecutive draws against them despite being locked in hotels for weeks upon weeks during the Covid pandemic, too.
The only two times Andy Friend has been sacked has been when he’s coached in Australian rugby.
David Nucifora, Ireland’s head of high performance, was also sacked in 2004 despite leading the Brumbies to Super Rugby glory.
Rugby Australia doesn’t need a review from people in suits who know little about the game.
The governing body needs to find rugby solutions to the game’s problems.
That doesn’t mean farewelling coaches in a hot second.
It means a fundamental look at empowering coaches, upskilling players and focussing on the thousands of young players emerging in high school and ensuring they don’t get lost to rugby league.
It needs the current crop of players getting back into not just club rugby but school rugby and mentoring kids so that the next Joseph Suaalii’s turn down advances from the NRL because they have a deep attachment to the Wallabies and those who represent Australia on the global stage.
Once upon a time the Andy Friends and Andrew Blades and Darren Colemans went through the Australian Institute of Sport and began their coaching craft and they believed coaching was a genuine option in Australian rugby.
Now many are turning their backs and looking elsewhere because they know they will get chewed up and spat out.
What RA – and the states who could overthrow the board – must do is support Jones and his vision.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.