‘That’s not a bad question, mate. You must have spent a lot of time on that one. I’m impressed with that.” When you are dealing with Eddie Jones, you learn fairly quickly that compliments and insults are basically made of the same substance. Everything here is masks and layers, shifting floors, the performance of a performance. The words themselves are largely meaningless: sometimes they are sincere and true, sometimes not, but you’re never going to know for sure, so in a way it hardly matters. Trying to scan a Jones press conference for genuine insight is a little bit like applying a meteorological analysis to the lyrics of It’s Raining Men.
And so you start questioning yourself. You even start questioning facts. You listen to Jones talking up the potential of his side, a pack that can “dominate the World Cup”, the way a new young group of players can “fulfil their dreams” and inspire a new era of success in Australian rugby, and you think: hang on. In the universe I choose to live in, you guys have just lost your last five games in a row. What universe, exactly, do you inhabit?
