“It’s where I feel most relaxed, mate,” a laidback Eddie Jones says of Japan, where he is based, as he explains his good mood despite the disappointment of losing his job as England head coach last month. “I’m not under constant scrutiny and I don’t get noticed a lot so I can go about my business fairly unencumbered.”
I have interviewed Jones more than 40 times, mainly while working with him on his autobiography, and there is a marked contrast between today and those prickly occasions when he was under great stress. It means that Jones can now reflect on the three key mistakes he believes he made during his seven-year England tenure. The most damaging of these was not always choosing the right assistants while, off the field, he concedes it was an error to say last year that the public school system was at the root of England’s leadership concerns.
