Nick Cain talks to Eddie Jones about the way ahead for his Grand Slam team
His mindset was to park the first England Slam for 13 years as soon as possible and address the next step on the way to his main ambition of winning the 2019 World Cup – starting with the summer tour to his homeland, Australia in June. That’s why Jones was on the road from the Bagshot base to Leicester soon after 6am on Monday, and why – having liaised with the Leicester rugby director over his future plans, with Manu Tuilagi an important item on the agenda – he hotfooted it back to Pennyhill Park by 2pm, in good time for his afternoon Press conferences.
The next thing on the Jones agenda was to use those conferences to give his squad the loudest of wake-up calls. With little more than 36 hours on the clock since a groggy Dylan Hartley had raised the Six Nations trophy in Grand Slam triumph at the Stade de France, Jones sounded the alarm.
He said that no one in the starting 15 could be certain of their place, which he then emphasised by telling his captain Dylan Hartley that he was no world-beater as a player and that being a Grand Slam- winning skipper had earned him no special favours.
While he praised the Northampton hooker’s leadership skills, it came with the blunt proviso that he had to make gains on the playing front to keep the No.2 shirt: “Dylan is not the greatest player in the world, but he plays with his heart on his sleeve and people follow him – and you can see England missed that in the World Cup. He has been adequate, but there are parts of his game that he has got to improve.”
Having just helped Jones to land the top prize in European rugby, Hartley could have been forgiven for thinking that his head had not yet cleared from its collision with Uini Atonio’s giant knee. However, as the fog lifted the victorious Hartley will have realised that the warning had been issued because, in the head coach’s lexicon, tending to his set-piece day job expertly over a five-match winning run was little more than a basic requirement of a Test hooker.
The message sent out loud and clear to the England squad is that Jones wants more, and he is unsentimental and direct in his my-way-or-the-highway delivery.
If you want a measure of just how radical a shift this is, then you only have to compare the Jones approach to the way senior players protected their patch in the build-up to the 2015 World Cup.
When Stuart Lancaster mooted that Steffon Armitage might be included in the squad under the RFU’s ‘exceptional circumstances’ dispensation he was immediately warned off bringing the Toulon openside into the fold. With Tom Wood and Tom Youngs in the vanguard, they made it clear publicly that they would take a dim view of any player outside the Premiership being brought into the squad.
Any player now attempting to interfere in national selection, could depend on being given short shrift by Jones. However, while the Sydney born-and-bred head coach is a hard task master, there is plenty of carrot to go along with the stick, as well as an irrepressible enthusiasm.
He waxed lyrical about the tries scored by Danny Care and Anthony Watson at the Stade de France which kept England ahead on the scoreboard.
“We’ve definitely got a formation we play to, but then we encourage players to make decisions. We saw two tries where we did that brilliantly – Care’s when he saw the opportunity and went, and Watson’s.”
He described the latter as encapsulating England’s improvement – started by Hartley’s quick heel to No.8 at the scrum – as well as pointing the way to sustained progress up the world rankings. “The try we scored in the second-half is as good as you will see in rugby. A scrum on the left-hand side, a quick channel. Billy Vunipola is a big guy but after he’s broken their flanker is still on the scrum. He gets to their 10, there is a quick clean out, the 9 (Ben Youngs) sees space on the left and goes, the winger supports and a grubber kick leads to a fantastic try.”
Jones added: “If you consider what England previously did, the No.8 would never pick up and break. The players have learned in eight weeks how to play a different style – not going away from England’s strengths, but adding another string.”
Among the other strings that Jones is intent on playing are a greater capability to play an expansive, high-tempo game, and his attempt to get the Premiership clubs to buy in to individually tailored skills and fitness programmes for their England players. This prompted not only his trip to Leicester, but other visits scheduled this week to meet the movers and shakers at Bath, Saracens and Northampton.
Ask Jones whether this will be enough to counteract the speed that Australia will muster on the fast pitches Down Under, especially in the back-row with the twin openside threat of David Pocock and Michael Hooper, and he says he has a strategy in mind involving the back five of the England pack. The plan is not to change anything.
He explains his reasons for keeping a powerful but relatively slow Test back-row as it is, and using Maro Itoje‘s dynamism at lock rather than moving him to blindside. “At the moment for us he’s better at lock. It gives us another bloke who challenges at the breakdown. If we’ve got Maro playing in the second-row I don’t think pace will be an enormous issue.”
Jones went on to extol the virtues of blindside Chris Robshaw and openside James Haskell, describing the two flankers as not only the most improved players in the squad but also as “absolutely outstanding”.
Haskell ordered a couple of shirts with “6 1/2” on the back which he and Robshaw held up in a celebration tweet (above). This poked fun at those like Jones (and myself) who have said that neither Robshaw or the Wasps man are genuine openside flankers, and fair enough because they delivered when it mattered most.
Whether they can emulate that against Australia – even aided by Itoje’s mobility – is a concern, but Jones says they will step onto the plane in pole position.
“It’s our best back-row… there is no reason Haskell cannot keep improving. That is the best five games he has played for England, with the ferocity of his defence, and I think he’s enjoying it. He has been the best defensive seven in the Six Nations by a mile, with the quality of his tackling…when he hits people, he hurts people.”
When it was suggested that the addition of Jack Clifford would bring much-needed pace to the back- row trio for the three- Test series against Australia, Jones said he doesn’t consider that England have any young Test-calibre opensides. He added that the young Harlequin is going to have to prove his worth if he wants to play No.7.
“I want to see Clifford go back to the Premiership and be a George Smith. If he is a George Smith he could be ready for Test rugby… to start with he can play 7, and then I think he’ll move to 8. I don’t think 7 is his natural position – but we don’t have any natural sevens.”
Mention Matt Kvesic and Jones responds that the Gloucester openside has yet to make a cast-iron case for himself. “I’ve spoken to him, and I do not want to make that (conversation) public, but he knows exactly what he has to do.”
My hunch is that Kvesic has been told to concentrate on mobility, doing track work to regain the speed and flexibility he had at U20 level.
Jones adds: “Ultimately we will need a faster back-row, but for the moment we are well served by the back-row we’ve got.”
That same ‘no excuses’ outlook was evident as he was asked what he was going to do with the midfield selection options suddenly open to him at 10-12-13, with Henry Slade having recovered from a broken leg and Manu Tuilagi back on stream.
Jones sees it as an opportunity: “It’s the most interesting area because we have so many options…we have some lovely options. I spoke to Manu this morning and if he gets through four or five games for Leicester and plays well he will be ready to go in Australia. We have Henry Slade, who I will go and watch, and I look at him as a 10-12 option. Then we have two or three really good options in every position.”
Jones was also fulsome in his praise of Owen Farrell for having made such a success of his transition to inside-centre.
“Owen has been a lifelong 10 and he has gone and played Test rugby superbly at 12. He has done a great job. Whether we keep him at 12 or move him to 10 to compete with George Ford, we will wait and see.”
With Australia on the horizon, Jones offered a cameo of what he hopes to achieve on tour. “I won’t say we don’t have numbers on our backs at all, but we want to be able to interchange in positions and play. We are not a structured team – we do not have a lot of sequence in our play.”
The less structure, the more difficult the Wallabies will find it is to predict and prepare for their Red Rose opponents. Jones is already sharpening the thorns in the hope that Australia snag themselves.
However, as far as ‘Fast Eddie’s’ own preparations for England’s tour of Australia are concerned, they started at dawn on Monday, with the Slam already stashed in the swag bag.
