'We called the journalists fans with keyboards, and he created the idea of circling the All Blacks during their haka'
England head coach Eddie Jones has revealed much of his coaching philosophies, his life journey, some of his tactics and provided an insight into the teams he has coached over his career in a wide-ranging interview with The High Performance Podcast.
He talked about the process he went through when taking over the England side after the 2015 Rugby World Cup, where he immediately tried to get a read on the players and work out who he could keep and who needed to go.
“Your ability to get a feel for the group I think is important,” he told The High Performance Podcast.
“You walk into a team for the first time, you look at the players and you think ‘right, who do I need on my side here immediately, who do I need to get rid of, who maybe I can keep’, and you work in with those players.
Jones explained that when he decided who would stay in the environment, it came down to whether he thought that player could have a positive influence and singled out James Haskell.
“People who are going to be a positive influence that either have a massive work ethic, or have great character. Probably a good example is [James] Haskell with England, he’d been a bits and pieces player and he had something about him.
“You could tell the boys liked him, but wasn’t possibly brave enough to be himself. So what I tried to do was get him to be himself.
“A big physical guy, play like that, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and then be that life of the party type character off the field.”
England’s coach revealed he had used a motivation technique to draw the best out of Haskell by guaranteeing him a spot in the team for the entire Six Nations campaign, and highlighted the need to be either apply pressure or take pressure off certain players.
“It is always the communication you have with them. I think at the start of the Six Nations I guaranteed him a spot in the team for the whole tournament, to make him believe. To take the pressure off him.
“Your always trying to put pressure on or take pressure off, and your ability to read what they need at that particular time is important.”
Jones says he learnt to ‘read the room’ inside a team environment from his friend who managed hotels.
“Go and watch a general manager at a hotel, I learnt more from watching hotel general managers than anywhere else.
“I used to have a mate who had a hotel around here, used to run the Tokyo Hilton, I’d go and have dinner with and he was a rugby fan.
“We’d go and have dinner and I’d watch him, he’d give me full attention but he’d be able to see whether that waiter put down the knives and forks correctly. And then he’d call them over and give them a word straight away. It was a brilliant lesson in observation.”
When queried about the mental side of rugby and the tactical side, Jones said he believed they are intertwined and must be in synergy. He then talked about how he had gamed the All Blacks at the World Cup, using his media strategy to put them under more pressure.
“The mental side is how you are thinking about the game, and the tactical side is just the employment of those thoughts.
“I’ve got a guy called David Pembroke in Australia who cultivates the media strategy. And I don’t follow it 100%, as some of the ideas are way out here, but he wants to control the environment.
“And the best one was for that New Zealand semi [2019 World Cup]. We immediately went out on attack at the start of the week, we wanted the New Zealand media to put pressure onto the New Zealand team.
“We called the journalists fans with keyboards, and he created the idea of circling the All Blacks during their haka,” he explained.
England stunned the All Blacks with a 19-7 win in a dominant display, while their reponse to the haka generated a lot of buzz.
“I’ve got another sports psych who is a tactician, absolute tactician. So he will say, ‘they’ll be thinking this, you’ve gotta be thinking this’, now how can you employ that. He’s got some weird and wonderful ideas, again, we don’t use them all.
“I think that is one of the things is to get that synergy, if that makes sense (between mental side and tactical side)”.
“I think all the other stuff is the easy stuff. Getting players fit is easy, it’s just effort, it’s having the right programme, having good coaches.”
“On the technical side, at the international level, we don’t really coach rugby, we are just trying to get a team organised, thinking the same way.”
Jones spoke of his desire to keep coaching international rugby in search of ‘coaching the perfect game’, an idea that he would field a team so good they would be ‘impossible’ to play against.
“I want to coach the perfect game,” he explained.
“Now, in a professional game of rugby if you can control 50 minutes of the game, you will win the game, and I want a team that can control it for 80 minutes.
“Imagine going out there and you are impossible to play against. Impossible.
“When you’ve got the ball, they can’t get it off you, when they’ve got the ball, they’ve got so much pressure they are giving it back to you and that’s unrelenting. That would be fascinating.”
Comments on RugbyPass
Je suis sûr que Farrell est impatient de jouer avec Lopez et Machenaud et d’être entraîné par Collazo… 🤭
1 Go to commentsAn on field red (aka a full red) in SRP must surely carry a bigger suspension than a red card given by the bunker as that carries a 20 minute team punishment. Had Damon Murphy abdicated his responsibility as a ref and issued both Drua players a yellow, which would have been upgraded to a 20 minute red by the bunker, that would have killed Australia and New Zealand’s push for the 20 minute red to be trialled globally from July this year.
11 Go to commentsEver so often you all post a Danny Care story that isn’t the announcement that he has finally re-signed for one more, victory tour season at Quins and I’m just like, “well you fooled me again!” My absolute favorite player ever, we need to make his final year at the Stoop (and Twickers) official already. I know he supposedly snubbed France but I won’t feel better until he signs.
1 Go to commentslate hit what late hit it wasn’t at all late and can clearly see he was committed before the tackle
1 Go to commentsChristian Lio -Willies 2 try perfomance was a standout. As was captain Scott Barrett. Up front was where the boys won it.They are a great team and players. Fantastic Crusades , you can keep going.
1 Go to commentsI don't know how the locals feel about that? I guess if you call yourselves the Worcester Wasps that might be appease. But really we need more teams in the Premiership in my view so they are not padding it out as they are at the moment. It might curtail so many players going abroad as well
5 Go to commentsNZ 😭😭😭is certainly rivaling England for best whingers cup!😭😭😭 !!!
25 Go to commentsYup. New Zealand won 3 out of 10 world cups played. SA 4 out of 8 attempts 30 Vs 50 per cent.🤔🤔
25 Go to commentsShould've done this years ago. Change Saturday kick off times to around 11am. Up and off and back home before 3pm, limit travel time too. Allows players to actually do something else with their Saturday that's family oriented or being rugby fans they could ‘watch’ pro rugby. Increases crowds etc. How can anyone that enjoys grassroots and pro rugby have to choose between the two on Saturdays?
9 Go to commentsI bet he inspired those supporters just as much.
1 Go to commentsBen Smith Springboks living rent free in his head 😊😂
67 Go to commentsGood to hear he would like to play the game at the highest level, I hadn’t been to sure how much of a motivator that was before now. Sadly he’s probably chosen the rugby club to go to. Try not to worry about all the input about how you should play rugby Joey and just try to emulate what you do on the league field and have fun. You’ll limit your game too much (well not really because he’s a standard athlete like SBW and he’ll still have enough) if you’re trying to make sure you can recycle the ball back etc. On the other hard, you can totally just try and recycle by looking to offload any and everywhere if you’re going to ground 😋
1 Go to commentsThis just proves that theres always a stat and a metric to use to justify your abilities and your success. Ben did it last week by creating an imaginary competition and now you did the same to counter his argument and espouse a new yardstick for success. Why not just use the current one and lets say the Boks have won 4 world cups making them the most successful world cup team. Outside of the world cup the All Blacks are the most successful team winning countless rugby championships and dominating the rankings with high win percentages. Over the last 4 years statistically the Irish are the best having the highest win rate and also having positive records against every tier 1 side. The most successful Northern team in the game has been England with a world cup title and the most six nations titles in history. The AB’s are the most dominant team in history with the highest win rate and 3 world cups. Lets not try to reinvent the wheel. Just be honest about the actual stats and what each team has been good at doing and that will be enough to define their level of success.
25 Go to commentsHow is 7’s played there? I’m surprised 10 or 11 man rugby hasn’t taken off. 7 just doesn’t fit the 15s dynamics (rules n field etc) but these other versions do.
9 Go to commentsPick Swinton at your peril A liability just like JWH from the Roosters Skelton ??? went missing at RWC
14 Go to commentsLike tennis, who have a ranking system, and I believe rugby too, just measure over each period preceding a world cup event who was the longest number one and that would be it. In tennis the number one player frequently is not the grand slam winner. I love and adore the All Blacks since the days of Ian Kirkpatrick when I was a kid in SA. And still do because they are the masters of running rugby and are gentleman on and off the field - in general. And in my opinion they have been the majority of the time the best rugby team in the world.
25 Go to commentsHaving overseas possessions in 2024 is absurd. These Frenchies should have to give the New Caledonians their freedom.
21 Go to commentsBell injured his foot didn’t he? Bring Tupou in he’ll deliver when it counts. Agree mostly but I would switch in the Reds number 8 Harry Wilson for Swinton and move Rob Valentini to 6 instead. Wilson is a clever player who reads the play, you can’t outmuscle the AB’s and Springboks, if you have any chance it’s by playing clever. Same goes for Paisami, he’s a little guy who doesn’t really trouble the likes of De Allende and Jordie Barrett. I’d rather play Carter Gordon at 12 and put Michael Lynagh’s boy at 10. That way you get a BMT type goalkicker at 10 and a playmaker at 12. Anyways, just my two cents as a Bok supporter.
14 Go to commentsThanks Brett, love your articles which are alway pertinent. It’s a difficult topic trying to have a panel adjudicating consistently penalties for red card issues. Many of the mitigating reasons raised are judged subjectively, hence the different outcomes. How to take away subjective opinions?
11 Go to commentsYes Sir! Surprising, just like Fraser would also have escaped sanction if he was a few inches lower, even if it was by accident that he missed! Has there really been talk about those sanctions or is this just sensational journalism? I stopped reading, so might have missed any notations.
11 Go to comments