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It seems Eddie Jones will lead England at the 2019 World Cup regardless of the results he achieves between now and then. The Rugby Football Union’s chief executive, Steve Brown, said on Wednesday that it would take something “extraordinary” for Jones to lose his job, and that the RFU will not be making any changes to the England coaching set‑up without Jones’s say-so as they analyse why England finished fifth in the Six Nations Championship.
Jones has just started his internal review of what went wrong and Brown explained that the “check and challenge” on Jones’s conclusions will be provided by the “range of experts” on the Professional Game Board at their next meeting. Which is the RFU’s standard practice.
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The RFU has, in short, invested all its hopes in Jones and, rather than seek to impose any changes on his set-up, is backing him to figure out what is wrong and fix it. Given England’s upcoming run of fixtures, it is quite a show of faith – one which, Brown admits, could ultimately cost him his job as CEO if Jones does not deliver.
England play three matches in South Africa in June and then, at home in the autumn, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. Brown said: “Eddie and his coaches have my confidence, and the measure of how good they are and can be will be how they respond to these tough times.”
Brown knocked back the idea that England might benefit from appointing a director of rugby as a layer of management between the CEO and the coach, which is the kind of role Andrew Strauss has taken on at the England and Wales Cricket Board. But as it stands, it is unclear exactly who there is at the RFU who can challenge Jones on his management style or flag up any mistakes he makes. The coaches, players and support staff who are contributing to his review all have to answer to him, and Brown rightly thinks that he does not have enough knowledge of elite rugby to do it himself.
“To be honest I wouldn’t make those suggestions, things around selection, the detail of training and coaching is for Eddie and the team to take care of,” Brown said. Which means “the first person that puts Eddie straight is Eddie – Eddie is self-critical, challenges himself and that’s something I’ve seen in the seven months I’ve been his boss that is quite key”.
Brown explained that Jones has a “network of people he talks to” for feedback, “a whole range of people supporting him on psychology and game mentality and planning and all those things”.
Brown described the review of the Six Nations result as a “collective position”, but it seems very much to be a collective led by Jones. The RFU will only look to add to England’s coaching staff if Jones decides he wants to do it. “With all these things it’s all part of the evaluation,” Brown said. “I don’t expect, from what I’ve seen so far, that there will be any knee-jerk changes.”
Brown reiterated how sorry Jones was about the remarks he had made at a corporate event last year, when he described Wales as a “little shit place” but said he would not be making any changes to Jones’s situation when it comes to speaking engagements. “Eddie is allowed to make a limited number of speaking engagements in his contract and I have to authorise all of those. We keep a close eye on that.” He also ruled out any push for central contracts, since the deal the RFU has in place runs through to 2024.
So there is nothing they can do now in that regard to improve their chances at the World Cup in 2019. And that tournament is, Brown says “the key aspect of the plan here”. He and Jones “have to get everything in place that puts us in the strongest possible position to be able to win”. Which is why Brown also defended the RFU’s recent decision to give Jones a contract extension until 2021 as “absolutely the right thing to do” because “we didn’t want the distraction and the debate and the deliberations and whatever else about Eddie’s future and our future, in the buildup to the World Cup”.