A month after returning as Wallabies coach, Eddie Jones says he is not concerned about having no assistant coaches locked in, and flagged using Super Rugby coaches on his staff for a short-term, “smash-and-grab job” at the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
Amid countless interviews, promotional appearances, chats with the prime minister and trips to regional NSW to watch trial matches, Jones has also been searching for assistant coaches to fill out his staff for the Wallabies’ campaign this year, which centres around the World Cup in September and October in France.
While forwards coach Dan McKellar is set to stay on, Jones admitted on Wednesday he had not locked in any assistant coaches yet, and later in the day, the Herald revealed former Rabbitohs coach Michael Maguire had turned the Wallabies coach down for a role as defence coach.
Jones said the search was “moving along nicely”, and while he wanted it resolved as quickly as possible, there was no desperate urgency.
“In a lot of ways we have time because as a coaching team we need to be together probably for the last six to eight weeks of Super Rugby, where selections will become important,” Jones said.
Eddie Jones is still searching for assistant coaches.Credit:Cole Bennetts
In a World Cup year, the difficulty of late-notice recruiting means Jones is likely to put together a short-term unit, and then build a permanent staff for 2024 onwards. Asked if he may follow in Michael Cheika’s footsteps and call up Super Rugby coaches, Jones said: “That’s a possibility, yeah.”
“We haven’t discounted anything at this stage. We have a bit of a smash-and-grab job, so we need people who can do a bit of a smash-and-grab job,” Jones said.
“This is like a nine-and-a-half month job in which we have to do this. There is a beautiful jewellery story around the corner, we have to get four or five coaches who can work together and bring together a team, get in there and steal the trophy and get out. They’re the sort of people we need.”
Jones said he’d been impressed with the trial games between NSW and Queensland, and the Brumbies and NSW a week earlier. But he is saving his judgement on players until Super Rugby starts next week, and in a handy guide for Wallabies aspirants, the new coach revealed which games would count most when it came to selection points.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese talks with Eddie Jones at a women’s rugby funding announcemet at Kirribilli House.Credit:Getty
“The games against the Crusaders and whoever the next strongest New Zealand side is, they are the important selection games because that’s where you see the level of the players. And, of course, the local derbies,” Jones said.
Jones, who has previously said Australian rugby was strongest when it had three teams in Super Rugby and harnessed the existing cohesion, admitted he may look to base his Wallabies team around the best-performing team in Super Rugby Pacific.
It is a strategy Cheika used with NSW players at the 2015 Rugby World Cup, and one Jones also used successfully while coaching England, when he built the team around a core of Saracens players.
“I am definitely a cohesion subscriber, but I don’t control that,” Jones said.
“Because if there is one dominant team in Super Rugby then you can have that, but if there are two dominant teams it will be different, if there are three equal teams it will be different. I don’t control that. So I can subscribe to that theory but I don’t control it.”
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