‘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?
But then this is the real gift of Jones, and even now nobody does it better. Often you see it described as “siege mentality”, but in fact it is a little more complex. It is the ability to create whole new realities around his teams, to populate them with a mixture of old myths and new vibes, to tell his players: look, there’s a picture in my head, and most people can’t see it yet, but if you stick with me you’ll get to see it too. Everyone else sees a callow, inexperienced team with a fragile midfield and errors waiting to happen. But I see the potential. I see what you can really be. Now, go and do a shuttle run.
This, perhaps, was the real intention of his extraordinary outburst a few weeks ago at Sydney Airport. Jones railed at the assembled reporters for their “negativity” and accused them of writing off Australia’s World Cup chances: a principled stand only mildly tarnished by the green canvas hat he was wearing, which made him look less like an elite sporting operator and more like a soap star who had just been voted off I’m A Celebrity. It was the comms equivalent of pressing the reset button, establishing a clean break with the past. “A bit of fun,” Jones later called it, but it served a vital narrative function. Fine, you guys keep crying over Michael Hooper. We’re busy writing a new page.
Now, ahead of Australia’s opening game against Georgia, Jones has a new story to tell. And for all the obfuscation and distraction, this is the part of coaching that has always genuinely moved him: the process of turning raw base metal into precious silver, rendering the picture in his head into flesh. It was striking to hear player after player speaking about last month’s brutal training camp in Darwin, where they grimaced their way through gruelling physical drills, tackles interspersed with press-ups, tug-of-war contests in 30C heat. “I feel like I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in,” said the back row Rob Valetini. “I don’t think I’ve ever trained as hard as we have. Our connection’s grown through that as well.”
And even if results are yet to turn their way, there has been enough in their performances to hint at a direction of travel. They led the All Blacks 17-3 at half-time in Dunedin before imploding in the second half. Their new brand of front-foot rugby has been error-strewn at times but also sparkling in periods. The emphasis has been on training decision-making rather than drilling structures, encouraging players to react to the game in front of them rather than the diagrams they studied in the analysis room. “We can’t play to a structure because the picture’s always changing,” scrum-half Tate McDermott said. “There’s a lot of scenario-based, reaction-based stuff, and it was a big shift to what we were used to at our Super Rugby clubs.”
In the meantime, Jones has been crafting the wider tale. One of his favourite sporting books of recent years is Owen Eastwood’s Belonging, which argues that we are all motivated by a need to attach ourselves to a shared story, that we are all linked by a common thread to the past and future, and that we perform at our best when those values and beliefs are reinforced. It is why Jones speaks so often about reconnecting this team with an Australian public that has grown largely apathetic to rugby union in recent years. The next World Cup in 2027 will be in Australia, and Jones realises that the hard yards need to be done now.
“Rugby’s not about enjoyment,” Jones once said. “Enjoyment is sitting on Coogee Beach with an ice cream, watching the waves.” And on some level we probably all know how this is going to end: in a maelstrom of needless feuds and unsettled scores, embittered ex-coaches and hasty pay-offs. But for now, eight months into his new project, Jones is the dream weaver, the conductor of the World Cup’s youngest orchestra on the eve of its opening recital. And we’re still hooked. Because for all the bluster, and against our better judgment, every so often Jones means exactly what he says.
