Eddie Jones is under increasing pressure following Australia's heavy defeat to Wales. Photo: ITV Sport
Out of touch, out of luck, out of time. Eddie Jones was Test rugby's resident rogue for over 20 years, turning himself into a one-man vaudeville act with his deadly tongue and rapier wit. Except no one laughs anymore, especially Australia. The 63-year-old has graciously returned to work for the Wallabies on the pretext that his country needs his Solomon's wisdom to succeed. Eight months later he had led that team to nothing but humiliation as they recorded their first ever exit from the World Pool Championship stage. Belatedly, his compatriots think they have been duped by someone who told the game much better than he presented it.
It's unconscionable that Jones continues. Forget all the flannel, he could still turn Australia into world champions in 2027. In eight Test matches he had only managed to beat Georgia, and that pathetic consistency reached its clearest expression in this capitulation to a Wales team that could hardly believe their flimsy resistance. “We will beat Wales,” he said with a mischievous smile. Who was he kidding? By accepting this £400,000-a-year job immediately after leaving the Rugby Football Union, this diminutive dictator was acting on nothing short of blind faith.
That alone should be a reason for Hamish McLennan, chairman of the Rugby Association Australia, fire him, no matter how seduced he is by Jones's cult of personality. But it is now reported that Jones was behind the scenes looking for alternative work in Japan — a story he was furious about when asked but did not deny — he was to be immediately put on the first flight to Tokyo.
The Australian fans had seen enough and left in droves before the end. The sight should have sent a message to McLennan, even stronger than the shouts that greeted the announcement of Jones' name at the start of the match. The plan was for Jones to raise the profile of the Wallabies by giving them valuable publicity at his press conferences. But the only headlines he brings are of an embarrassing nature, culminating in his truly humiliating capitulation.
You wonder what the younger players, unaccustomed to Jones' shenanigans, must be thinking. This was a man who promised that they were the future, that he would orchestrate the rebuilding of Australian rugby around them. And yet, before they had a chance to achieve anything or even play a World Cup match, he applied for a job in another country. Naturally, they did not perform here as if they wanted to play for him.
It doesn't say much about his faith in this team that just a week after arriving in France, Jones was apparently batting his eyelashes at Japan, looking for a potential exit. So much for the five-year revival. So much for Jones remaining at the helm for the 2025 visit of the British and Irish Lions and home World Cup. After a series of failed experiments and an apparent refusal to move beyond this tournament recently, he decided that he should develop an exit strategy.
Australia will likely fail to qualify for the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup for the first time. Photo: Getty Images/Chris Hyde
Mixed messages have become central to the horrific theater of it all. England fans have become wearily familiar with the scenario in which Jones continues to spin self-serving stories to bolster his job security. Even as darkness engulfed him at Twickenham, he insisted that the fruits of his labors would only be seen at the World Cup. This time, in the case of Australia, he had a ready excuse for his team's youth to fall back on, telling his doubters that they would have to endure a little pain before making any final judgment.
But few people buy the words of his seller anymore. Drew Mitchell, a former member of the wing, quickly lost patience, demanding to know what Jones meant by emptyly repeating that he «took full responsibility» for the defeat to Fiji, and why he was unable to offer any convincing justification for his departure from the stalwarts adherents of Michael Hooper and Quaid. Cooper is at home. In particular, there was a wilfulness in the dismissal of Hooper, as in his absence the Wallabies looked painfully lacking in experience.
Honestly, any notion of Jones' master plan is wishful thinking, and the chaos of the halfway point is a clear illustration. Here is a man who, having dropped Cooper, a veteran of 79 Tests, thought it would be a clever ploy to take 22-year-old Carter Gordon along on the adventure. When that backfired spectacularly, with Gordon at fault for Fiji's first defeat in 69 years, Jones instead turned to Ben Donaldson, a natural defender who had previously started only one Test in the 10th match against Wales in November last year. The plan fell apart horribly here, and was summed up when Donaldon abandoned the restart entirely.
Even at this lowest point in his decline, Jones somehow retained influential supporters. When confronted with a report that Jones was preparing to move to Japan, Phil Waugh, chairman of Rugby Australia, responded that he took him at his word that it was «damn». But taking everything this mischievous character says at face value is rarely the wisest move. His habit is to blindly swear that he can unleash the potential of any team. But he received cruel retribution: Australia admitted, as England did in the end, that the emperor had no clothes.
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