If Eddie Jones is alarmed about Australia’s disastrous World Cup campaign, it isn’t showing. Despite his Wallabies team being eliminated in the pool stages for the first time in the tournament’s 36-year history and large sections of the Australian rugby public calling for his head, the 63-year-old on Tuesday reaffirmed his commitment to Australian rugby and again denied claims of his interviewing for a job coaching Japan’s national side.
“I’m staying, mate. I’ve always been committed to Australian rugby and I want to leave it in a better place. That’s still the job,” Jones said at his first formal media call since returning home from the tournament in France. “I haven’t been speaking to anybody. My intention is to stay [until 2027] but we play in a game where the coach doesn’t decide how long they stay.”
Speaking at Coogee Oval, home to the Randwick club he represented in 210 games between 1981-91 and headquarters for his first ever coaching gig in 1994, Jones showed no sign of buckling under the pressure of the Wallabies’ 2-7 win-loss record this season. He walked past the media to inspect the centre square before fronting, eyes glinting. Asked if he had the support of Rugby Australia, Jones said: “I believe so… but we’ve got to do a review. Results were disappointing and everyone was gutted by it, especially myself.”
Jones was appointed to his second term as national coach in January, trumpeted by Rugby Australia as “the best coach in the world”. But his second coming has been riven by poor team results and Jones’s public outbursts, tactical blunders and, recently, allegations of treachery. Yet Jones said his passion for coaching remained. “Massively. 100%. I love the game. I love working with young players, seeing them mature and struggle. That’s all part of it.”
As are results, something RA’s review will surely focus on, as their code continues to lose ground to the NRL and AFL. Jones’s teams, led by six different captains in nine Tests, lost all five matches of the Rugby Championship to sink to a record low world ranking of No 9 before the World Cup. It triggered Jones’s decision to jettison popular talismans Michael Hooper and Quade Cooper to blood a squad of raw talent with an eye to the 2027 World Cup in Australia. “I stand by the decisions I made,” Jones said. “I had a look at the resources we had, the players we had and I made a decision to go with youth.”
But it backfired horribly as his young teams failed to gel and froze on the world stage. At the tournament Australia won in 1991 and 1999, Jones found new rock bottoms: thrashed 41-17 by France in a warm-up then losing to Fiji for the first time in 69 years. The final insult was a 40-6 humiliation by Wales, Australia’s worst ever defeat at a World Cup, to secure elimination.
“We just weren’t good enough,” Jones said. “We’re off the pace, definitely. Look at the quarter-finals at the weekend. We’re not at that level. We can’t pretend to be. But can we be at that level by 2027? Yes we can. I think I’ve left Australian rugby in a better position. A lot of good young players are going to benefit from that experience at the 2027 World Cup.”
Jones regretted asking media to “give yourself uppercuts” in his farewell press conference. “I probably need to give myself an uppercut,” he grinned, “but sometimes you say things in the heat of the moment that you regret.” He also called on RA to push for the high-performance system similar to Irish rugby, which is run by Australian performance director David Nucifora.
“I think for the last 20 years in Australia we’ve spoken about getting more aligned. To win the World Cup in 2027 we need the whole country to align from the grassroots all the way up. Over the period I was away, we got more fractured. But I’m not an administrator – blow the whistle, yell and scream, put my arm around players – that’s for smarter people than me.”
