Jeff Probyn column: Your players have stepped it up Eddie Jones, now it’s your turn

While reading another interview with Eddie Jones imploring his players to raise the bar yet higher, I must admit to being a little puzzled: why would an international coach have to keep demanding his charges push themselves to improve their performance whenever they train or play a game?
There can be only one answer and that is that the standard of competition they play in is not good enough. I say not good enough, but good enough is difficult to define as the players play in a number of different competitions and some excel in all.
Saracens‘ domination of the Premiership and Europe would make you think that they are playing at a standard that none of their opposition can live up to but it may not be as simple as that.
Sarries swept all before them in conquering Europe but who did they beat and were those teams really putting in the effort you would expect from such a prestigious competition?
In the pool games, Sarries faced two French sides (Toulouse and Oyonnax) and one Irish (Ulster) in a competition that the French clubs had more or less devalued by moving it to suit the Top 14 season. Four out of the five pools were topped by English clubs with Racing 92 the only French team, and they only managed to do it by beating Northampton on points difference.
The eventual final, although absorbing, was more a show of a disciplined controlled game plan played in the rain, than a highly-skilled, open flowing ball-handling, running game.
Now as an old-fashioned forward, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it but it was hardly a master class in the skills that you would expect to see on the modern international stage. With Racing 92 fighting hard to get a play-off place at the top of the Top14, you have to ask how seriously they and all the other French teams took the games.
The change in financial priorities for the Top 14 club with their new TV deal has left the Champions Cup rather like the old Amlin Cup as a competition, with the French teams taking part but seemingly unbothered about the results.
Then there is the Premiership itself, a weekly contest between very unequal teams as those with the financial assets dominate the others with only one team breaking the mould, Exeter. A look at the table confirms the usual suspects fighting for survival while the same is true for those that make the play-offs at the other end.
Only Exeter have bucked the trend and continue to improve year on year since joining the Premiership without buying a plethora of overseas stars.
Bristol‘s promotion will be interesting as it will show if the standard of the Premiership has moved on with the increased revenues they have over the Championship or not.
If standards have improved then, given that Bristol only just managed to beat Doncaster on points difference to finally gain promotion, they could be in for a very uncomfortable season’s fight to survive.
Eddie is right to call for players to set their own standards and strive to be more than just a good club player, particularly as he is still constrained by the two picks a season for his EPS.
Fortunately for him a number of players have picked up the challenge, with a number of discarded players showing they weren’t quite ready for the scrap heap yet with solid games against Wales last Sunday. Both Joe Launchbury and Courtney Lawes showed England have real strength in depth in the second-row alongside George Kruis and Maro Itoje.
Luther Burrell’s display showed that some good has come out of the Sam Burgess disaster by forcing him to focus on improving his game and making the Australia tour.
It seems to me that Burrell took the disappointment of World Cup non-selection and worked hard on those parts of his game that were not quite up to speed, made the necessary improvements and took the chance that was given to him.
Jones, having made the call for more and more efforts from the players, has seen a majority of them step up their game but now it is his turn.
A tour of Australia is never easy and a three-Test series will be a challenge, but for Jones it will be the homecoming for the nearly man. This is his chance to show his own people that he can produce a winning team, even if it is against his home nation.
The challenge for Jones is to produce a game-plan that is very different to the style that we saw in the Six Nations, a game-plan something closer to what we saw against Wales last week, but played for 80 minutes.
Jones will be aware that a slow start like last week will be fatal against the world’s second-best side Australia, as they are unlikely to make the same number of mistakes as Wales, and despite his defence of Ford, he will probably start with Owen Farrell at fly-half.
For Jones it is time to stop the jokes and show that he can take this squad that have so much promise to a different level and win against the Southern Hemisphere.