Matt Williams: England’s shoddy treatment of Jones may well come back to haunt them

Eddie Jones’s sacking as England coach last week reminds us all of how the mediocre of this world derive great joy from witnessing a fall from grace.

Eddie’s dismissal was constructed by a thousand well-aimed, malicious cuts. The English rugby media are far from balanced, impartial or proportionate and they mounted a campaign against Jones, building the case for his removal.

Eddie and I do not know each other well and are not friends, but we were rivals. I coached against him both at Super Rugby and at international level.

Coaching against Eddie was an exercise in doing whatever it took to win, because he would do the same. The lines were blurred and the gloves were off. It was trying to win by any means and at all costs. Respect at this level of the game is not given, it is earned.

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Eddie won a Super Rugby competition with the Brumbies, reached two World Cup finals as a head coach in 2003 and 2019, and won the tournament as an assistant coach with South Africa in 2007. This record demands respect from us all.

From the trophies in his cabinet, the sheer force of his work ethic and his dedication over three decades, Eddie Jones deserved more than the way he was treated by the RFU, former English players and the current English team in recent months.

The deriding of him in the media in recent weeks reflects poorly on those who have uttered such bile.

The sporting virus of short-term thinking started in English soccer and has now cross infected almost every English sport. Any series of defeats or poor form automatically turn the crosshairs on the team’s leadership, who are almost immediately confronted with possible dismissal.

It is a type of madness that can be cured at club level by a sugar daddy with deep pockets who can buy in short term talent, developed by other institutions. In international sport, talent cannot be bought in. It can only be produced by the elite player development pathways of that country’s systems.

In 2004 after Clive Woodward’s exceptional long-term planning had created the systems and processes that produced the 2003 World Cup win, he had to endure the lunacy of seeing the RFU administrators dismantle the structures that had just delivered them the William Webb Ellis trophy. The administrators believed that they knew more about winning international rugby matches than their World Cup-winning coach.

It was one of the greatest examples of shooting yourself in the foot that I have witnessed in rugby.

History will look at the RFU’s decision to break Eddie Jones’s contract in much the same light.

Eddie Jones is perhaps the best coach in the world at understanding the complexities and fine margins in getting a four-year World Cup cycle as close to correct as humanly possible. Helping lead Australia, South Africa, Japan and England, Jones has coached World Cup excellence across two decades.

The 2019 semi-final between England and New Zealand is one of rugby’s greatest ever matches and one of England’s finest performances. England outthought and outperformed a great New Zealand team led by Steve Hansen and Kieran Reid.

While South Africa were far too good in the final and deserved their victory, Jones understands better than anyone on the planet that success for the 2023 World Cup needed a new plan, new staff, new players and a new way of playing. All processes that take time to produce.

Affording time for coaches to develop teams is not something that sits well within any English sport. It demands instant gratification. Defeat is met with derision. Considerations of development, change and growth are dismissed, even laughed at.

It is a form of sporting imperial hubris. As we have seen with the demise of Wasps and Worcester, there is much about the public perception of rugby in England that is, in reality, delusional.

Eddie Jones is a serial winner. He is driven to succeed like no one else I have ever met in rugby. That drive and determination to do whatever it takes does place a strain on key relationships within the teams he coaches.

If relationships were becoming strained, which happens in most elite sporting environments, counselling and support should have been offered. Breaking his contract so close to the World Cup was a grave mistake, and will cost this English team.

His phone will keep ringing.

Less than a year out from the World Cup, the Wallabies may be looking for an adviser, even a possible future head coach. Australia are on the favourable side of the World Cup draw, away from South Africa, New Zealand, France and Ireland.

England could be their quarter-final opponents.

Can you imagine the delight Eddie Jones will take if he is asked to advise the Wallabies, the one team on the planet he craves more than any other to coach again, on how to defeat England? The team he gave seven years of his life to and took to a World Cup final, only to have that service thrown back in his face.

The Eddie Jones I know and respect, the winner, the workaholic, the thinker, the innovator, the dogged, technically excellent old hooker who loves a good old scrap would desire nothing greater in the world than to jam all his knowledge, wisdom and learnings down the collective throats of those in England who have unjustly maligned him.

As Marcus Aurelius reminds us, “Everything is transitory”, even the pain and humiliation of a wrongly dismissed coach.

Marcus goes on to tell us that there is only “the knower and the known”.

Eddie is the “knower”. Long-term coaches who are dedicated to growth get better with each experience because they know every team they coach is an opportunity to learn. Jones’ knowledge and vast experience may well yet prove crucial to a Wallaby success and an English failure at the next World Cup and beyond.