Eddie Jones has claimed England will struggle to enjoy consistent success on the world stage unless the “battleground” of off-field politics is properly addressed. The head coach also believes the English game is being “held back” by tradition and is still not fulfilling its potential.
With less than three months to go until the Rugby World Cup kicks off, Jones remains focused on guiding his adopted country to success in Japan but his exasperation with the club-v-country tensions within the English game is increasingly apparent. “I have always thought England have been underperforming,” Jones told the LifeTimes podcast. “If you have financial security and depth of players, you should be one of the top three countries in the world most of the time, and that hasn’t been the case.
“I thought there was an opportunity to do things better, but then you get into the game here and find out why [England underperform]. It’s a difficult job because the national team is a battleground between the clubs and the RFU. You sit in the middle and are blamed for most things. If the clubs aren’t going well it’s your fault, if the RFU aren’t making money it’s your fault. And that’s been the tricky part of it.
“There are wonderful players here and a wonderful opportunity but it’s always being held back by the traditions of the game here. The clubs run themselves basically and the RFU tries to manage it. The RFU has the financial clout but the clubs have the political clout. You need those things to be working together to be sustainably successful. We’ve shown you can have some success here but whether you can be sustainably successful, like New Zealand, in the situation here may be problematic.”
In three and a half years since taking the job Jones has worked under four RFU chief executives – Ian Ritchie, Steve Brown, Nigel Melville and now Bill Sweeney – and has repeatedly stressed that reforming Twickenham is not part of his role. He has now admitted, however, to some misjudgments as head coach, including employing the wrong assistants and over-training his players during last year’s Six Nations.
“You can recruit the wrong people and I’ve certainly done that. The cultural environment we have is not going to suit everyone. It’s a driven environment … that’s not for everyone and sometimes you lose people along the way. That doesn’t really concern me. We’ve got to the stage now, after four years, where we’ve got the right staff in place.”
Selecting the optimum 31-man playing squad for Japan will be equally crucial and the latest batch of additional names for the preliminary training camps is due to be confirmed on Friday. The Gloucester trio of Danny Cipriani, Ollie Thorley and Willi Heinz, along with Northampton’s Courtney Lawes, are set to be added to the group currently training in Bagshot.