Meanwhile, Jones has refused to allow England’s preparations to be disrupted by the ferocious storm that has swept across the Gold Coast. I like to think it suits my style of play.
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He has been welcomed into Jones’ squad and was given an initiation ceremony at the team hotel on Sunday night which only players, and none of the coaching team, were allowed to attend.
The Grand Slam winners are Down Under for a three-match series against the Australians as they look to build on their Six Nations success from the spring.
The former Wallabies alongside fellow ex-internationals Greg Martin and Rod Kafer kick off the Fox Sports production mocking Jones’ claims England’s summer tour Down Under would be a failure if they didn’t win the summer series.
“They’ve come in and have got a lot more resources to put in their game than we have”.
England arrived in Queensland on Thursday and were able to complete their first training session 24 hours later – just moments before the deluge began – but the following day they trained indoors at a local school. “He’s just doing what he thinks his team needs”, Cheika told reporters. His team might need this obviously.
Jones is well aware of the task England face in his homeland, but the Tasmania-born head coach has challenged his players to steer clear of troubled waters as they embark on a very different adventure to the great explorer Columbus.
The squad features 22 members of the Wallabies’ 2015 Rugby World Cup contingent while former Wallabies captain James Horwill (Harlequins) is the only overseas-based selection, after the New South Wales Waratahs announced the signing of prop Sekope Kepu.
Cheika, who last month extended his contract with the Wallabies through to the end of 2019, knows talk about a winning culture is pointless unless his players buy into his message and do their job on the field against England. “When you play Test rugby you want to beat everyone”. We want to score tries and we’ll score tries wherever the space is, whether that’s out wide or through them. The only way that we can get it out there is by the way we perform on Saturday when we represent Australia and that’s how we want it to be.
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“This 2016 team is a very different team and it would be foolish to think that anything that has happened in the past is going to help this team perform bar the connections that we have made as people between us since we have got together”.
