Eddie Jones is a man who likes to remind you that he knows a little more about his sport than you do, that there isn’t a worthwhile question you could ask that he wouldn’t have a good answer to. And, since he has spent his life studying rugby and still wakes at 5am every day to get on with the job of becoming a better coach, he is usually right, too. Which is why it was so striking to hear him talk about the one problem which, by his own admission, he did not manage to solve in the six years he was coaching England. And that was what drives the players.
Not in their every day in training, he knew that, or even in their everyday games, against teams they knew they could beat, but in their hardest matches, under the heaviest pressure. Jones was never quite sure that he knew how to stoke them in those moments.
