Dan Jones: World rugby's best coaches see England job as a poisoned chalice

Lonely voice: Eddie Jones is one of the few top coaches to have an interest in the England job
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Dan Jones18 November 2015

If we were to pick a rugby analogy for the process by which the RFU have gone about selecting the new England head coach, we might choose the uncontested scrum. There have been plenty of names clustered around the prize. But no one has been pushing very hard to win it.

At the time of writing the bookies rank Eddie Jones, the former coach of Australia and Japan, as the most likely candidate to get the job. If so, this represents a partial success for England and the RFU. A success because they have actually found someone to take them seriously: better still, someone who fits their loose, if rather reactive brief of ‘having international experience’. But only a partial success, let us be clear.

During the last week or so, most of the world’s leading coaches and a handful of the brightest domestic candidates have made it embarrassingly plain that they would not touch the job of England with a cattle prod.

Warren Gatland, Graham Henry, Michael Cheika, Wayne Smith, Rob Baxter, Mike Ford and Jim Mallinder have all pleaded better things to do than taking up the boss job at the world’s richest union.

So, curiously, has Jones himself, who has in the last few days outlined several intractable structural problems facing anyone who wishes to turn England into regular world-beaters. But more of that in a minute.

Why have so many top rugby men been so leery when it comes to England?

There are two answers. Firstly, many of them have jobs already: either old jobs to which they are freshly committed (Gatland) or new-ish jobs which they intend to see through. Smith is having a year off. Henry seems to be done with taking proper jobs. Even if Jones is hired, it will be at a cost seriously inflated by his recent commitment to the Western Province Stormers, a post he took less than two months ago.

You could argue that this is not the RFU’s fault. But it sort of is. Everyone knows the end of a World Cup cycle is the peak moment for coach movement, and most decent teams — clubs, regions or nations — take care to lock down their coaching arrangements well ahead of this time.

England, of course, thought they had done so: Stuart Lancaster signed a six-year contract in 2014, supposedly to keep him in charge of England until 2020. It was either foolish of the RFU to give him this in the first place or foolish of them to let him walk away from it. Either way, it is their fault that they are coachless at the worst and most expensive possible time to be recruiting.

Long-term plan: Lancaster signed a six-year deal in 2014
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More than this, however, most of the best rugby men around appear to see coaching England for what it is: a lucrative honour concealing a total bloody nightmare.

Let us return to what Jones said this week about England. “How can you manage your players when they are controlled by other organisations?” he asked. “In my opinion, that is the single greatest task ahead of whoever is going to be appointed as the next England coach.”

He is right to point this problem out but misguided if he believes anyone can just breeze in and solve it. England’s club/country divide hobbles their national ambition. It lay at the heart of at least two damaging failures during the last World Cup: the restrictions on picking foreign-based players such as Steffon Armitage, and the Sam Burgess flanker/centre debacle.

Nor is the problem fully worked through. The new England coach need only look across to the other club-driven rugby nation, France, to see what the next four years probably holds for England.

Thanks to a weakened Euro and a weakened salary cap, the English Premiership is attracting increasing numbers of foreign stars — Leicester’s new centre Matt Toomua will not be the last such to arrive. This will have a delayed but direct effect on the quality of players produced for England, the effects being properly felt, ooh, around the time of the 2019 World Cup.

Jones may be the man for England. He may not. Whoever takes the job, it will not be easy, which may explain why so many men who know international rugby have been so reticent to go anywhere near it.

Lillee spot on about Johnson

So long, then, Mitchell Johnson, who is retiring from international cricket. More than 300 Test wickets at a couple of notches below 30 is a great return for a bowler who has been ridiculed and feared in similar measure. His performance in the 5-0 Ashes whitewash of 2013-14 destroyed Andy Flower’s England — a drubbing that in some ways we’re still getting over. Way back, Dennis Lillee called Johnson (above) a ‘once-in-a-generation bowler’. It took a while, but he was right.

Why Carter’s a real patriot

Intriguing to read that back in 2013 Dan Carter flirted semi-seriously with the idea of abandoning rugby after this year’s World Cup, to have a crack as a kicker in the NFL with the New England Patriots. As we know, it never happened, and Carter is now off to enjoy lucrative international retirement at Racing Metro instead. But it’s still worth wondering what might have been. A bad joke? An unexpected success? Better or worse than Sam Burgess playing rugby union? Okay, enough of that, now.

It’s even more rosy for Ronda

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No sooner had non-UFC nerds really started to take an interest in Ronda Rousey than — oh dear. The no-longer unbeaten bantamweight fighter (right) was taken down in slightly stomach-churning fashion with a kick to the neck by Holly Holm, and is now quite reasonably taking some time off to lick her wounds. Still, in a sense she is now more interesting than ever — not just a brilliant and dazzlingly marketable fighter but a flawed hero in search of redemption. What’s not to like?

Uefa so right: show goes on

Suggestions made in the aftermath of the Paris attacks that Euro 2016 shouldn’t be played in France are foolish, so let us commend Uefa when they deserve it: the decision that the tournament goes ahead is the only proper position to take. There are several places that shouldn’t be hosting international football tournaments in the near future, Russia and Qatar among them. Not so France. Whatever small part sport can play in our collective defiance of terrorism, it must be played. Let the show go on.

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