Jones must sign up for 2023 or decide to call time on England
Coach has to commit to the World Cup cycle or his backroom set-up will remain destabilised
With Scott Wisemantel departing this week, Eddie Jones seems to be getting through assistant coaches quicker than Elizabeth Taylor used to dispose of husbands.
By the time the Six Nations comes around, John Mitchell may be the last man standing in Jones’s backroom team. But before you can consider who will be the next to step into the frying pan, you have to determine how long Jones is allowed to control the gas. At the moment, he is contracted through to 2021, which he is unsurprisingly happy to fulfil as the highest-paid coach in world rugby. That may be great for Eddie’s bank balance, but not so great for English rugby.
Either Bill Sweeney gives Eddie an extension to his contact that takes him through to the 2023 World Cup or he sacks him. It makes no sense to give a coach two years of a World Cup cycle. As soon as there is a finishing line in sight, so many dynamics change. What will Eddie’s chief concern be, building for the World Cup or winning games in the short term? For the players, as soon as you know a coach is on borrowed time then it diminishes their authority. Then, if you are a highly rated assistant coach, such as Sam Vesty, why would you sign on for Eddie when someone else may come in and want their own team? Everything is effectively in stasis.
People will point to Rassie Erasmus winning the World Cup with just two years in charge of South Africa, but that was never planned. History tells us that it is a four-year process to win the World Cup. England got really close this time only to fall short. My instinct would be to back him. Jones admitted he made mistakes. Let him learn from them, particularly with a young squad which only needs a few tweaks rather than major surgery.
Too often in this country we overreact to a single failure and demand change. But every time you start afresh, you are almost doomed to repeat the same mistakes. It is no coincidence that Clive Woodward was the last England coach to keep his job from one World Cycle to another and ended up winning the tournament in 2003. The amount of intellectual property the Rugby Football Union has let slip through its fingers is just criminal. You even have a situation now where the entire England coaching team from the 2015 World Cup are all coaching in Ireland. That is madness.
No one knows this team better, but he has to do four years. So, ask him the question: are you committed to taking us through to the next World Cup? If not, then the RFU will need to find someone else.
I am sure, having come so close this time, Jones will be determined to go one better.
If he is, then the next question becomes, who will his assistants be? The churn rate is a real concern. Jones is undoubtedly a dynamo. He rises at 5am and goes to bed at midnight. Not everyone can consistently do 14-hour days and remain inventive and creative. Other people are not used to those high demands. Paul Gustard is a pretty similar character with his work ethic and desire, but he clearly was burnt out by the constant demands. It is OK when it is your choice, like with Gustard at Harlequins. I know Geordan Murphy is doing 16-hour days to try to sort out the mess at Leicester. But it is different if you are an assistant forced to march to the beat of someone else’s drum.
It takes a strong character for someone to tell Eddie that, actually, if you send an email at 5am it does not always need an immediate response. The reason why “Mitch” has survived is that he has a huge amount of experience as a coach. He has seen this all before. All the other coaches Eddie first appointed have tended to be young guys. They have not been head coaches before so they struggle to stand up to him. Mitch has been head coach, assistant coach, he has run a club, he has run a franchise. He has seen it all, so he can legitimately tell Eddie exactly what he thinks.
So, either Eddie needs to start going easier on his assistants or he finds men of the same fortitude as Mitchell. But first he needs to determine his own future.