Eddie Jones is up early again, before five in the morning in Tokyo, and it seems a bleak hour to talk about failure and humiliation. After losing seven of the nine matches in which he coached his native Australia last year, including a disastrous World Cup campaign where the Wallabies were knocked out in the pool stages, Jones has just started a new job with another of his former teams, Japan. But his reputation has been scorched while his integrity and coaching acumen have been ridiculed by many in Australia and England.
Four years ago, having led England to the 2019 World Cup final after a magnificent performance against New Zealand, Jones retained much of his aura as one of the best, if most abrasive, coaches in Test rugby. But the next three years were a mess and despite his 73% winning record surpassing any previous England coach he was fired in December 2022.
Almost every longstanding coach in professional sport knows what it is like to be reviled or sacked. Jones once told me how, after his previous tenure in charge of the Wallabies ended in his dismissal in 2005, he had cried in the lift on his departure.
“So how did I feel?” Jones says now, echoing my query about his crushing return to Australia. “It probably had a finality about it. I felt I’d let people down. But I also felt there was a role to play in trying to get Australia to see where they were at.”
He adds: “I’m happy to accept I failed. I couldn’t constitute the change I wanted in a short period but I gave it a really hard go and failed. Not good enough. I carry the scars.”
Jones does not usually express contrition or regret. “I don’t care what other people think, mate,” might be the phrase he has said more to me than any other in our many conversations over the years. So his admission that he “let people down” is rare, but it’s also clear that Jones remains typically bullish.
“You take on these challenges and be prepared to fail or you sit back,” he says. “I could have done nothing for 12 months but I wanted to give it a go. I was bloody disappointed we didn’t constitute the change we needed and get results in the short-term. But I’m sure some of those things are going to help Australian rugby in the long term.”
Asked to address the mistakes he made over the past year, Jones says: “We tried to do too much change in too short a time and it created instability. The thing I probably got really wrong was with the media. It’s a difficult one as there was a need to create some media exposure because the game was lacking that attention. I had a role to play but I was probably too confrontational in that area. In the end, when you take the media on, they always come looking for you.”
His relationship with the media shattered after allegations that he spoke to the Japan Rugby Football Union while preparing Australia for the World Cup. Jones admits that he participated in a Zoom call in August with a recruitment agency working for the JRFU, but insists he was merely responding to a request to share his past experience of the job.
As to other changes he should have made, Jones shakes his head. “No, no, no. Selection-wise, the safe thing would have been to keep the senior players, no doubt about it. But is that going to help Australia in the long-term? I don’t think so. For me this was a World Cup in-between for Australia [hosts of the 2027 tournament]. You don’t sacrifice a World Cup but sometimes we’ve got to move this team on to get it to the position it needs to be. We tried to do it too fast and just weren’t capable.”
Jones suggests he “really enjoyed” coaching Australia again and rejects the idea that it was a mistake to accept the job. “Not at all. They wanted me to do it, I wanted to give it a go and it was always high-risk. But why are we on Earth if we don’t take these challenges?”
There is another negative in triplicate when I ask if his self-belief was shaken? “No, no, no.”
I find this hard to accept. Surely he doubted himself? “Yeah, having said that, doubt’s a part of everything. No one charges in every day and says: ‘I’m 100% right.’ You wake up every morning, thinking: ‘Am I doing the right thing?’
“I was just reading a summary of a book called Only the Paranoid Survive by the guy [Andrew Grove] who ran Intel. And it’s true. Only the paranoid do survive. You’re paranoid about everything, you’ve got doubts all the time. But you think: ‘I’m going down this track,’ and you back your decision. I’ve always got doubts. I’ve got doubts whether I should do this interview.”
I suggest paranoia seems a troubling and wholly unreliable state of mind – and very different to a healthy dose of self-doubt. Jones nods. “Whenever you do something challenging you’re always assessing and, yes, you have doubts. But you weigh up the situation, glean as much evidence as possible and make decisions in what you think are the best interests of the organisation.”
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For all the criticism Jones engenders, he still exudes enthusiasm for rugby over self-pity. Rather than shunning the World Cup after Australia made their embarrassing exit, Jones marvelled at the quality of the knockout games. “I loved it. The standard was fantastic, really taking the game to a new level. It was also fascinating watching Ireland and France. During much of the four years leading to the tournament both had almost immaculate preparations. But still they weren’t good enough to get to the semi-finals. It shows the standard across the board is increasing and you’ve got to do everything right collectively. Glean all the resources, put them in the right places, get the right players coming through and your team playing the right rugby.”
France and Ireland suffered excruciatingly narrow defeats to South Africa and New Zealand. Were they undermined by a psychological barrier – especially Ireland, who have never made it past the last eight? “I don’t think so. They’re wonderfully prepared teams but on the day they weren’t quite good enough. We’re talking about one call from the referee, one bounce of the ball or being just a little off in one area of the contest. That can be the difference between winning and losing.”
After a chaotic and often miserable four years, England were one point away from reaching the final again. They pushed South Africa to the brink in a 16-15 loss. “Steve Borthwick did a fantastic job,” Jones says of his successor. “He took over the team less than 12 months before and went back to basics, attritional play with a very experienced team, and had a really good World Cup.
“I was really pleased for Steve, having worked with him for eight years [with Japan and England], and the players. I had a long association with lots of those boys. But they weren’t quite good enough to get through.
“I always felt [England] needed to add a little more to our game, which was difficult, and I couldn’t achieve that. Steve went back to England’s core game, which was very sensible, and they ended up surpassing what any team had done as a beaten finalist [four years earlier].”
Who will win this year’s Six Nations? “It’s a really interesting competition. The balance of power is meant to be with France and Ireland. But Ireland will go through a mini-renovation as [Jonny] Sexton has finished now and he stands head and shoulders above lots of Irish players in terms of what he’s given to the team. I don’t know whether [Peter] O’Mahony will be fit so there could be a slight changing of the guard. But their ability to bring through talent systematically will make that less cumbersome than some countries.
“France, psychologically, has probably got the most work to do because they’d set themselves that target [of winning the World Cup]. The whole country put their hand in the fire and they came unstuck in difficult circumstances. How they respond will be interesting. Sometimes a young team, like they’ve got, can subconsciously knock off and there’s a big coaching challenge for Fabien [Galthié].
“England is going through a generation change. Scotland will be fairly stable. Italy is changing coach again. Warren Gatland came back to Wales, brought back senior players and they were very solid in the World Cup. Whether he continues that or brings younger players through is difficult to know. It’s one of the most open Six Nations for a long time.”
Jones, who arrived in Tokyo on 26 November, began his four-year contract with Japan on 1 January. He takes over a squad in desperate need of new players even if, last weekend, Jones watched a game when “Michael Leitch, who has played at four World Cups, still played well at 35. Can he go to the next World Cup as a role model for younger talent? It would be silly for me to make those judgments now. I’ve just arrived and there’s 80% of the season to go.”
At the 2015 World Cup, Jones inspired Japan to an unforgettable victory over the Springboks. South Africa, after that defeat, won the next two World Cups after making “huge systematic changes to the way they brought talent through”. Jones believes the Japanese system also needs a radical shake-up. “They had a magnificent 2019 World Cup. Then, up to 2023, Japan only won 7% of its Tests against top-10 countries.”
While the standard of the Japanese league has soared, with the influx of overseas players, Jones faces “a considerable project. But I’m really happy to be back”.
His apartment is ideally situated as “I could get a three-iron out and hit the National Stadium from here”.
Will Jones be even more determined to prove to the world that he remains an outstanding coach? He pauses. “It’s a really good question. But in the end it doesn’t matter what people think. All that matters is what you do with the players. There are obviously players who don’t enjoy me, particularly those I’ve dropped. But I like to think the vast majority would say I’ve played a part in making them better and that’s all that counts. If someone shot me now and, before I took my last breath, they asked: ‘Have you done the right thing by the players?’ I could say: ‘Yes.’ That’s the only thing that matters.”
Jones smiles at the reminder that his first match with Japan will be against England in June. “That’ll be fun. I went back and watched Japan and England in the World Cup. Right up to the 50-minute mark it was nip-and-tuck and then, in the last 30 minutes, Japan lost seven set pieces. We need to really improve in that area because to eat at the absolute top table, with the top eight teams, you need a good set piece. So we’ll be working hard and I look forward to it.”
