Keeping up with Jones is England’s problem

Eddie Jones considers himself a genius in a world of chinless mediocrities who should thank their lucky stars he has agreed to be paid a pile of money to turn their lumbering lugs into a rugby team.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in London

THE difference between José Mourinho and Eddie Jones for foreigners like us, measured by the effect they seem to have on the Poms, is that the latter speaks better English.

Like Mourinho, Jones scares people with his directness, his impoliteness, his unorthodoxy. Unlike Mourinho, he has the language to avoid his confidence curdling into arrogance. And to be maddeningly evasive when it suits him.

Other coaches name replacements. Not Jones. His bench bristles with “finishers”. Now he has decided hooker Dylan Hartley and centre Owen Farrell will serve as co-captains until after next year’s World Cup in Japan.

If that sounds familiar it’s because Jones installed John Eales and George Gregan as Australia’s captains when his tracksuit was a sick shade of yellow.

Thing is, Eales and Gregan are greats of the game as players and leaders. Gloucester teammates, and roommates, Hartley and Farrell are nowhere near their league.

Don’t bother arguing the point with Jones. There is a tolerating malice in the sidelong smirk he cocks at questions and criticism alike. It’s difficult to shake the impression that he considers himself a genius in a world of chinless mediocrities who should thank their lucky stars he has agreed to be paid a pile of money to turn their lumbering lugs into a rugby team.

You could feel his eyes rolling last week as he sighed and explained why he would take his squad to Italy for two training camps next year in preparation for the World Cup in Japan.

“It’s common sense that if you are playing in warm weather you have to get used to it physically, mentally and skill-wise and in terms of how you recover,” Jones said from Portugal, where he and his players are trying to do just that.

“We’ve already heat‑tested the players once at Pennyhill Park [in Bagshot, Surrey] before the South African tour [in June] and there were a number who had negative reactions to the heat. We’ve got to do more work in getting them right.”

Heat? In South Africa? In June? That’s a neat sidestep of the awkward fact that the Boks won the series.

Jones has won 25 of his 31 tests with England, but the wagons are circling in the dust raised by them losing six of nine matches this year. That includes four of their last five games, two of those against South Africa. In the heat. In June.

All that will come to Twickenham on Saturday along with the Boks for the opening encounter of their end-of-year tour, and around here you could cut the tension with a gumguard.

Here’s Robert Kitson in The Guardian last week: “England’s battle plans for previous tours and tournaments have not always had the desired results, with their series defeat in South Africa in June notable for successive defeats at altitude after the management had opted to base the players at sea level throughout.”

The English don’t half fancy a good bit of nitpicking, don’t they? But Jones has admitted he wouldn’t be surprised to get the boot should his team go down in any of their four matches next month — their other opponents are New Zealand, Japan and Australia.

Sack the coach with a World Cup looming? As if. Besides, Jones has doused that flame by saying he has been able to pick only “a third of a World Cup squad” in his current 36, due to injuries.

He’s a cunning one, our Eddie. Not unlike the victim of a kidnapping who torments his captors into offering to pay to get him off their hands. Good luck with that, England.