England star hails Eddie Jones’ ‘massive part in English rugby history’

Alex Coles may have been fearful entering Eddie Jones’ England camp for the first time but he credits the Australian’s tough love for launching his Test career.

Jones takes his Japan side to Allianz Stadium on Saturday with the aim of masterminding a seismic upset against the side he coached from 2016 to 2022.

Coles is set to feature in the Nations Championship clash, having become an integral part of Steve Borthwick’s pack since nailing down a starting spot in the second row on the 2025 summer tour.

But it was a different matter when he was called up by Jones as a 23-year-old rookie in 2022, hoping to impress a demanding taskmaster but nervous at what lay head during an autumn in which he ultimately won his first three caps.

“It was daunting coming in at that time,” Coles said. “As a young player coming through and having not experienced it, you heard all these stories about Eddie.

“I was certainly apprehensive and he certainly had that aura about him, you felt a little bit on edge around him.

“But I’m so grateful to him because at that stage in my career in my own head I didn’t really believe that I was ready for that level.

“He saw something in me and made me believe that I could be at that international level and pushed me to work on my game.

“Even though I then dropped out of the team for a bit after that, without him seeing that in me it would’ve taken much longer to get to the point where I was ready to play international rugby.”

New Zealand was the only match of the 2022 autumn campaign that Coles sat out, but he still had a crucial role in preparing the team for the 25-25 draw that unfolded. A week latter he was back in the starting XV.

“The chat was that New Zealand were going to try and get into our heads and wind us up and my sole role in one training session was to just try and wind the starters up,” Coles said.

“I was like this fresh-faced 22-year-old, scared of all the older heads like Mako Vunipola and Owen Farrell.

“And Eddie would just run behind the defensive line and be like, ‘You’re not winding them up enough, you’re not getting in their heads’.

“So I ended up coming around the side of a caterpillar ruck because I’d run out of ideas and tackled someone who was the third man in a caterpillar ruck.

“I then got piled on by about four or five of the starters on the floor. After that Eddie said I’d trained really well!”

Jones was sacked at the end of that autumn, paying the price for an ongoing slide in results and a relationship with the Rugby Football Union that had soured, although he remains England’s most successful coach in terms of his win percentage, which stands at 72 per cent.

“I hope he’s warmly received on Saturday because he played a massive part in English rugby history ” Coles said.

“You could compare him to the football manager Jose Mourinho and people like that who bring their own sort of aura, some controversy and polarisation. That adds to the narrative and the spectacle of the game.”