The Wallabies coach Eddie Jones says he doesn’t regret coming back to coach Australia, but we certainly lament his return.
Wallabies head coach Eddie Jones at Coogee Oval yesterday.Credit: Steven Siewert
While leading the Wallabies to a Rugby World Cup disaster, The Sydney Morning Herald revealed Jones was in discussions about a national coaching job in Japan. He has returned to Australia and denied disloyalty.
The Herald has been right across this train wreck from the moment Rugby Australia sacked Wallabies coach Dave Rennie in January in favour of Jones. Our coverage culminated in reporter Tom Decent’s extraordinary revelation last month that Jones had been secretly interviewed by Japanese rugby officials on the eve of the World Cup.
The Herald stands by our report. We are perplexed by how Jones can deny having any discussions with Japan – particularly when his track record has shown you can’t trust what he says.
A month after the 2015 Rugby World Cup, when Jones took Japan to a famous win over the Springboks, he sat in a press conference in Cape Town as the new coach of the Stormers and denied talking to the Rugby Football Union about taking over as England coach. Eight days later he was named the England coach. Last May, he told the Evening Standard rugby podcast in the UK: “I’ve signed [until the end of 2027], but as I’ve made the mistake before, I’ve stayed too long. So if we win the World Cup, it will be time to go. If we lose the World Cup, it will be time to go.”
Having spent weeks avoiding the media, Jones was allowed by Rugby Australia to front a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday where, despite coaching the Wallabies to only two victories in their last nine matches, he declared he was staying on as coach and emphatically denied reports he is set to take up a position with Japan. “I’m staying, mate. I’ve always been committed to Australian rugby, I want to leave it in a better place, and that’s still the job,” Jones said.
For weeks, he had taken umbrage at questions about loyalty and fudged answers until finally using the doorstop interview to deploy his self-justifying blokey wit. Meanwhile, Rugby Australia had been noticeably reticent about the increasingly problematic coach.
Surely, it would have been a simple matter for the administration to contact the Japanese and ask if our national coach was being poached or had been hawking his wares? After all, there is a new openness between the rugby nations – only last July Rugby Australia and the Japan Rugby Football Union signed a landmark memorandum of understanding to build a stronger relationship between the two unions, develop national teams, competitions, players, staff, and the sport of rugby in each nation.
But answers came there none, and now the World Cup rout only adds to Rugby Australia’s problems with a disconnect between schoolboy rugby, club rugby and Super Rugby, and tardiness in bringing women into the game casting a cloud over the future. In May 2020, Sydney businessman Hamish McLennan was named chair of Rugby Australia in an attempt to turn the code’s fortunes. His biggest reform was to appoint Jones. He was charged with developing a winning side and promoting the game.
Jones has failed on both counts. An independent review will now be conducted into the Wallabies’ failed campaign in France.
Whatever the outcome, the stark question remains: How could the Wallabies have such a disastrous Rugby World Cup and there be no repercussions? The coach stays, the chair stays, yet zero change, apparently.
But World Cup result aside, Australia should not continue to suffer a coach who has such clear contempt for his employer and Australian rugby fans.
