It wouldn’t be Calcutta Cup week without an Eddie Jones dig in the ribs, would it?
We have to have an English bete noire. In recent times Will Carling, Brian Moore, Rob Andrew and Matt Dawson have all happily filled the role (Jonny Wilkinson was never anything but modest, quiet, respectful and brilliant – thereby making it extremely hard to work him into a figure of cross-border antipathy).
These days Eddie fills the role with some relish, as he used to occasionally for Australia in times past, and which he did memorably for Japan in the Rugby World Cup of 2015.
We love him for it – the scribes, I mean. Prior to the match with Japan in Gloucester five years ago we were struggling for a line. Scotland put up then head coach Vern Cotter, who is a great talker about rugby and character if you get him on his own, but who freezes a bit when the camera lights start flashing.
Then they put up Ross Ford, a super lad but again not one of life’s more quotable figures, and WP Nel, for whom English is a second language.
Desperation stakes, then. Well, Eddie came in fresh off Japan’s historic win over South Africa, spoke for 20 minutes and we filled our boots. Outlandish claims, dubious hypotheses, and plenty of those little digs for us to feature in our otherwise empty columns. He was a pure delight.
Psychological sparring, they call it. That’s complete mince, obviously.
There’s not a single player who pays attention to what is said and takes it seriously. Eddie being Eddie, they shrug and roll their eyes.
You know it is all rubbish because after every game, whether he’s been proved right or wrong, Eddie is by some margin the most gracious and complimentary of modern rugby coaches. After a game Eddie is rugby’s Jurgen Klopp – it was Warren Gatland, even if he won, who was the snide, even bitter Jose Mourinho.
Eddie hasn’t disappointed this week ahead of the Calcutta Cup, talking of Scotland as the most niggly of opponents, that they try to distract noble old England with “things to put us off our game”.
The first reaction to these words is supposed to be anger (among the fans – as I say, the players don’t give a fig). The second reaction is, how can a man coaching Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje possibly dare to talk about the opposition being niggly?
The third should be to realise that Eddie’s words are not meant for the opposition, or their fans. They’re meant for England’s players.
If there is one team that is lacking in psychological backbone in world rugby right now, then it’s England. They’re the team that were supposed under Jones to dominate European Rugby and win the World Cup. Instead, since Eddie’s first year Grand Slam, England been woefully inconsistent for a team with their (unmatchable) talent base.
They’ve still won some big games. There was that incredible run of 17 wins on the trot to begin Jones’ tenure, which had stretched to 24 from 25 before they were utterly derailed by Scotland at Murrayfield in 2018 – in the first half mostly.
Since then, England’s fragile psyche has been plain to see. They’ve followed what should be defining wins with performances when they’ve simply lost the plot – defeat in Cardiff followed Dublin last year, the World Cup Final against South Africa followed the triumph against New Zealand.
It even happened within a single match at Twickenham last March, 31-0 up after half an hour and then rather humiliatingly having wild celebrations at escaping with a 38-38 draw against Scotland.
After that game Eddie spoke frankly about the psychological issues his team had, and how he’d solve them before the World Cup. Well, he clearly didn’t, witness the last two games in Japan and Saturday’s Six Nations opener against France.
That game was uncannily similar to Murrayfield 2018, not just in the way it played out on the scoreboard. Eddie is occasionally guilty of over-smart selections (so is Gregor Townsend) and his back row on Sunday was as unbalanced as the monster trio which was given the runaround by John Barclay and Hamish Watson in 2018.
England come north without Vunipolas, without Manu Tuilagi, a recognised No 8 or a half decent scrum-half it seems. They still have vast resources, but their perennial issue – moulding into a consistent, effective 15-man unit – seems beyond even Eddie’s considerable rugby brain.
At least his hair’s still great
Perhaps my affection for Eddie Jones stems from the obvious contempt in which he held Matt Williams, the hapless and mercifully brief Scotland coach of the early 2000s.
Williams has hardly had a gig since he was fired by Scotland, but he sprung up as one of the studio analysts on Irish TV for the game in Dublin last week.
He seems to get plenty airtime and scope to write in the Irish media, even though he hasn’t had any involvement in elite rugby for 15 years.
The Scots who remember him remain mystified by this. Still, I can report his hair is as luxuriantly silver as ever.
