Following his four-year appointment as England’s first foreign coach, Jones said there was “extreme talent” in the squad despite the team’s worst performance at a World Cup.
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Jones also leaves the Stormers to coach England.
Jones coached his native Australia to the 2003 RWC final, ironically losing that final to England, worked as a technical adviser for South Africa in their 2007 RWC triumph, and led minnows Japan to a shock win over the Springboks at the 2015 tournament, as well as beating Samoa and United States of America in the same event. His standards at the time were probably a bit too high for me. I got them also to write to 5 people that helped their son on their journey to be an England player and without the players knowing I collected these into certificates, presented it to the players and I said this is what playing for England means.
“Of course it is not ideal to lose your coach before you have even begun your pre-season campaign in earnest… we are well aware of that”, explained Wakefield.
The Rugby Football Union wore a relieved grin.
“It’s not about kicking or passing, it’s about playing the rugby appropriate for that situation”, explained Jones, whose first game in charge of England will be their Six Nations opener away to Scotland on February 6.
“That is one of my dreams”, Jones said.
“I’m looking forward to the opportunity when we go up against each other”.
When the Australian was unveiled amid great fanfare at Twickenham yesterday, he set his stall out to start his regime with a clean slate in the aftermath of the Stuart Lancaster era which ended in World Cup failure. “One of the first things I have to do is sit down with Chris”, Jones said.
“I’d like to think the teams I’ve coached have had good attacking games”. “Every time a player looks at the captain they know the values that are important for the team are being shown by him and that he’s leading the way”.
1 – Jones becomes England’s first overseas head coach.
“I remain very grateful to WP Rugby for this opportunity and I would sincerely like to apologise to anyone that might have been affected by my sudden decision to leave Cape Town – the WPRFU Executive Committee, the WP Rugby Board of Directors, my fellow coaches, the players, the union’s stakeholders and The Faithful, all of whom have treated me so well in my short stay. You have just got to understand what is negotiable in the culture and what is non-negotiable”. Unfortunately, England’s best poacher is Steffon Armitage, the 2014 European player of the year who has been central to Toulon’s success in the Heineken and Champions Cups.
“We won’t be copying the All Blacks, we will make our own style and I want the players to believe that 100 per cent”.
The fact that Jones has flipped in a few of his essential perspectives on the English game – he had questioned Robshaw’s abilities as a genuine openside and wondered why the Armitages of the world were not being picked – was, he said, because he was “being naughty” in newspaper columns and because your view changes once you are on the other side of the fence.
“If we get that buy-in, which I’m sure we will, then we’ll have a strong side. I’m happy with what we’ve got”, he added.
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But if Lancaster had a thorny task following the 2011 World Cup debacle, Jones has to rescue this generation from a very long night of the soul, and not just because Mike Brown, the England full-back, says the “trust has gone” from the set-up. “For that, we need clubs to play good rugby”.
