Whither Eddie Jones

Eddie Jones and Rugby Australia have taken the first steps towards formally negotiating an exit for the embattled Wallabies coach after a disastrous Rugby World Cup campaign.

In a major development just nine months after he was appointed Wallabies coach on a five-year deal, Jones and his representatives this week advised Rugby Australia they were open to striking a deal for him to leave.

Movement on Jones’ future emerged as former Wallabies captain Michael Hooper prepared to fly to Wales on Sunday, where he is due to play under Jones in a Barbarians invitational side only days after the Wallabies coach told the Herald he’d left Hooper out of his World Cup squad because he wasn’t a good role model for the team.

Jones flew to London this week to help incoming All Blacks coach Scott Robertson coach the Barbarians against Wales in Cardiff on November 4.
Before his departure from Sydney, however, legal representatives of Jones sent a letter to RA expressing a willingness to discuss a mutual end to his time as Wallabies coach, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation who are unable to comment due to the confidential nature of the letter.
RA chairman Hamish McLennan and chief executive officer Phil Waugh received the letter, which was sent on Wednesday, and discussions with Jones about his future could begin as early as next week.

Waugh and Jones both declined to comment.

The Herald last month revealed Jones had participated in a Zoom interview for the Japan head coaching role just days before the Rugby World Cup began in France. Despite repeated denials, this masthead and other news outlets have reported that plans were underway for a second interview with the JRFU in November. Jones, who last week denied he was doing a second interview, told Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons in an interview published on Friday that he was due to be holidaying in Japan with his wife in November.

Jones oversaw the Wallabies’ worst World Cup campaign in history in France, where the men in gold failed to make it out of the pool stages.

A Wallabies source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly, said the working relationship between Jones and the RA leadership had grown increasingly strained and the prospect of the Wallabies coach carrying on business as usual in 2024 was unlikely.

In the interview with FitzSimons, Jones said his relationship with McLennan and Waugh was “good enough”. “But there’s two parts to being committed,” he continued. “There’s me being committed and there’s them being committed to make the changes. And I think they are, but Australia’s a difficult environment right now, how antiquated we are in our thinking and the way we do things, and we’re still so territorial.”

Rugby Australia now faces a decision about how it wants to progress with Jones, given a negotiated exit would almost certainly involve compensation as he is contracted through to 2027.

Sources with knowledge of Jones’s contract have told this masthead that if RA parted ways with the coach in the first quarter of next year, it would carry a smaller financial cost. There are exit clauses in Jones’s deal that pertain to RA’s pursuit of private equity and a centralised governance model, according to sources with direct knowledge of the contract, speaking anonymously due to the confidential nature of the contract.

Almost all the Wallabies staff who worked with Jones at the Rugby World Cup have not had their contracts renewed for next year. Most were on one-year deals.

Wallabies general manager Chris Webb has also departed after his four-year contract expired. Webb served in the role with Dave Rennie before re-uniting with Jones, who he’d worked with at the Wallabies in 2003. Waugh was keen to retain Webb but the experienced administrator elected to finish up.
Meanwhile, Jones and Hooper are set for an awkward reunion next week in Cardiff, when the pair will both be involved in a Barbarians game against Wales.
Hooper is one of several Australian players involved in the November 4 game, which is a testimonial for Wales veteran Alun Wyn-Jones. Taniela Tupou, Rob Leota, Angus Bell and Rob Valetini are also playing.

Hooper was controversially left out of the Wallabies’ World Cup squad by Jones, along with experienced stars Bernard Foley and Quade Cooper. It proved costly for the inexperienced Wallabies but Jones doubled down in the interview with FitzSimons.

“The situation reminded me of when Wayne Bennett let Wally Lewis go. No one could quite understand why, but Wally Lewis wasn’t a great role model for the rest of the team. And for those guys, I don’t think they were the right role models for the team going forward,” Jones said.

“Don’t get me wrong. They’re not bad guys. But you need guys – particularly when you’ve got a team like Australia has at the moment – you need guys who are obsessed with winning, obsessed with being good, and those three are past those stages.”

RDW wrote:As am honorary Wallabies fan I can say with certainty that Jones need to go.

Rugby Fan wrote:

RDW wrote:As am honorary Wallabies fan I can say with certainty that Jones need to go.

I have a bit of sympathy for him on the direct charge. The Australian press started claiming Japanese media had reported Jones was confirmed for the Japan job. That was never true, as anyone with basic Japanese reading comprehension could have told them. One, gossipy, title had mentioned Jones, and only to say someone like him would be the JRFU's top choice.

There are other reasons to want him gone but the idea he was on the verge of abandoning Australia for Japan was never fully grounded. Mind you, I don't doubt he's maintained contact with the JRFU, and it is certainly possible he would turn up there if the ARU decides he has become too toxic. Going forward, the biggest issue for Jones is finding people who will work with him. There will always be new coaches who fancy an international stint on their CV. Whether he can get them to stay, is the problem.

RDW wrote:You hope for the sake of the Lions series that they turn things round quickly - a one sided Lions series where they romp to victory every game will be a big let down. They'll still sell the tickets though which is most important for the Lions...

I genuinely believe the Wallabies have the players to be a top 6 time - they've beaten most teams in the last few years, just not with any consistently - but really need to get their sh!t together quickly.

After the circus show that was Eddie's reign they surely need to get a much less controversial character and the players respect and want to play for. Who was that previous guy they had again...

RDW wrote:Jones has resigned!

Whatever you think about the Wallabies issues, there's no doubt this has been an absolute shambles

mikey_dragon wrote:

RDW wrote:Jones has resigned!

Whatever you think about the Wallabies issues, there's no doubt this has been an absolute shambles

Yep and the fans aren't the least bit pleased with the ARU.

RDW wrote:

mikey_dragon wrote:

RDW wrote:Jones has resigned!

Whatever you think about the Wallabies issues, there's no doubt this has been an absolute shambles

Yep and the fans aren't the least bit pleased with the ARU.

Understandable - those who saw fit to sack Rennie and then make things a whole lot worse have to shoulder responsibility here.

formerly known as Sam wrote:

RDW wrote:

mikey_dragon wrote:

RDW wrote:Jones has resigned!

Whatever you think about the Wallabies issues, there's no doubt this has been an absolute shambles

Yep and the fans aren't the least bit pleased with the ARU.

Understandable - those who saw fit to sack Rennie and then make things a whole lot worse have to shoulder responsibility here.

Dan McKellar was asked after the Tigers game on Saturday (before Eddie resigned) about the state of Aussie Rugby and he said it pained him and said the treatment of Rennie was one of the reasons he took a job abroad.

I expect some of the ARU management are going to come under a lot of pressure as I doubt many coaches will have been watching the goings on and thinking "that's an environment I want to be in".

doctor_grey wrote:

formerly known as Sam wrote:

RDW wrote:

mikey_dragon wrote:

RDW wrote:Jones has resigned!

Whatever you think about the Wallabies issues, there's no doubt this has been an absolute shambles

Yep and the fans aren't the least bit pleased with the ARU.

Understandable - those who saw fit to sack Rennie and then make things a whole lot worse have to shoulder responsibility here.

Dan McKellar was asked after the Tigers game on Saturday (before Eddie resigned) about the state of Aussie Rugby and he said it pained him and said the treatment of Rennie was one of the reasons he took a job abroad.

I expect some of the ARU management are going to come under a lot of pressure as I doubt many coaches will have been watching the goings on and thinking "that's an environment I want to be in".

I guess this is the problem with a turnaround - how to attract good people to fix a problem if the problem is people?

RDW wrote:This is a good article

https://rugbynews.net.au/weve-hit-rock-bottom-where-to-from-here-for-australian-rugby/?fbclid=IwAR1Sb09DOcyRpS5H52La-HFMwt1T-G7_wCpdvKdDt0GqDyiofv3dwwiv6jg

Hamish McLennan is no longer the chairman of Rugby Australia after he was ousted in a late night board meeting and resigned as a director.

Rugby Australia’s board met four times over the weekend after some of the organisation’s most powerful stakeholders went public with their demand for Mr McLennan, who is also the chairman of REA Group, to resign.

Mr McLennan had earlier told The Australian Financial Review that he would not step down even as several states including Queensland prepared to call an extraordinary general meeting and have him dismissed over his direction and leadership of the game.

“As Tom Petty famously sung, I won’t back down,” Mr McLennan said on Sunday. “This is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.”

On Sunday evening, Mr McLennan confirmed he has resigned from the board of directors after losing the chairmanship.

Former Wallaby Dan Herbert has been elected chairman.

In a statement, he said it had “never been more important for the Rugby Australia board, working with member unions, to come together and execute the reform we absolutely need”.

The stand-off over Mr McLennan’s position had escalated existing tensions between the state unions, sponsors, and executives, and threatened to further draw out an already long dispute over the future of the game.

The unions and Super Rugby clubs from Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and the ACT wrote to Mr McLennan on Friday and had initially given him until Saturday afternoon to consider his position (it was later extended to Sunday).

Their letter, which has since been made public, said the move was to do with Mr McLennan’s cultural fit rather than Rugby Australia’s plans to create a united high-performance structure and take control of their commercial decisions.

“We no longer have any trust or faith in his leadership, or the direction in which he is taking rugby in Australia,” the letter reads. “His decisions and ‘captain’s picks’ have directly led to a historic failure at the men’s Rugby World Cup and a Wallabies international ranking at a historic low, with all the regrettable and public fallout that came with it.”

Rugby Australia is overseen by a board of directors, but is owned by state and territory rugby unions, the owners of the Super Rugby bodies and the Rugby Union Players’ Association.

The board of directors includes former rugby players Joe Roff and Daniel Herbert, Virgin Australia co-founder Brett Godfrey, Barrenjoey’s head of corporate finance, Matt Hanning, former Salesforce chief executive Pip Marlow and non-executive directors Dr Jane Wilson and Karen Penrose. Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh also sits on the board.

Sources familiar with the position of the directors, who weren’t authorised to speak publicly, had said that there were divisions over whether to back Mr McLennan in light of the concerns of some shareholders.

Australian rugby descended into turmoil after the Wallabies failed to reach the knockout stage in the Rugby World Cup and coach Eddie Jones was reported to be flirting with a return to Japan. Jones has since resigned from his position – less than 10 months into a five-year contract.

Much of the fallout since has focused on the appointment of Mr Jones by the Rugby Australia board and Mr McLennan. It has also culminated in discussions about a new operating model, which would see high-performance coaches and training nationalised and Super Rugby clubs handing over their commercial functions to Rugby Australia.

While the clubs are supportive of a national high-performance division, there are disputes over the handling of money by Rugby Australia. At the same time, it has abandoned plans to inject $250 million in private equity in favour of a new $60 million loan. The loan has not yet been secured.

Mr McLennan had earlier urged ACT and Queensland rugby union members to call their own extraordinary general meetings and oust their own chairmen, on the grounds they had instigated a fight with him.

“They didn’t have the good grace to include NSW, Victoria and The [Western] Force in their secret discussions,” he said. “These are the same people who have told RA board members they have a coordinated campaign to discredit me if I don’t resign.”

On Saturday, Andrew and Nicola Forrest, who own the Western Force, and Melbourne Rebels chairman, Paul Docherty, came out supporting Mr McLennan. “We can’t land years of problems at the feet of one person. We are all custodians of the game for a short time, and our goal should be to come together, not to create more division,” Mr Docherty said.

The Forrests said Mr McLennan was steering rugby through a “difficult period”. “Now is not the time for more disruption in the sport, but a time for rugby to band together and back the proposed centralisation reforms,” they said in a joint statement on Saturday.

NSW Rugby, which was not consulted by other unions and last week agreed to hand over all corporate and performance functions to Rugby Australia, has yet to outline its position on Mr McLennan’s position.

This public fight could not come at a worse time for Rugby Australia which is in the middle of an independent review into what went wrong at the World Cup and has already made headlines for poor performance and the way it spends its money.

The review, led by former Wallaby Justin Harrison, is expected to assess everything from coaching and player performance to costs and corporate hospitality. Rugby sources previously told this masthead that Jones, at the very least, had blown his budget.

Mcsweens wrote:Back in Japan. Best place for him, but the manner of his departure from Oz stinks.

RDW wrote:12 teams he bluntly denied any link to the Japan job. 12. 

This  has shattered his credibility at the international stage! No idea why Japan want him but I suspect this will be the last of his internal appointments.

Joe Schmidt would be an outstanding coup for Australia.

No 7&1/2 wrote:

RDW wrote:12 teams he bluntly denied any link to the Japan job. 12. 

This  has shattered his credibility at the international stage! No idea why Japan want him but I suspect this will be the last of his internal appointments.

Joe Schmidt would be an outstanding coup for Australia.

Presumably Japan wanted him as he's a really good coach?

nlpnlp wrote:

No 7&1/2 wrote:

RDW wrote:12 teams he bluntly denied any link to the Japan job. 12. 

This  has shattered his credibility at the international stage! No idea why Japan want him but I suspect this will be the last of his internal appointments.

Joe Schmidt would be an outstanding coup for Australia.

Presumably Japan wanted him as he's a really good coach?

Based on his performance with England since 2019 and Australia, I think some people would question his credibility as a "really good coach".  Surely as an employee and as a coach of men you need to have credibility that if you say something you are being honest and mean it.  Yes some people find the Jones patter to journalists mildly amusing, but I think most of us just role our eyes and find his blatant untruths embarrassing. Most of us don't find disingenuity a positive trait.

Tokyo: Eddie Jones dialled into a Zoom meeting from Paris on August 25, two days before the Wallabies played France in a Rugby World Cup warm-up match. In that meeting room, the title says: “JRFU 1st Round Interviews with M15 HC Candidates.”

Representatives from the Japan Rugby Football Union were interviewing head coaching candidates to replace Jamie Joseph.

Jones joined that meeting to discuss the role as Japan coach from 2024 onwards.
It was clear from that secret meeting that a return to Japan was a distinct possibility.
After being denied entirely for many months, the detail and purpose of that call are now disputed, as part of the damage control spin laid out this week by Jones and his new employers, the JRFU.

They claim it was an “information gathering” exercise between Jones and the recruiting firm, Odgers Berndtson, who were employed to run the JRFU’s process.

This masthead stands by its original story that the August 25 meeting was an interview with the JRFU, based on informed Japanese sources and other strong evidence that suggested Jones was certainly interested in the role.

What isn’t in dispute is that when Jones logged into Zoom from Paris, at the Wallabies team hotel near Roland Garros, he was at that moment employed as the Wallabies coach, and was less than one year into a five-year contract.

He was also two days out from the Wallabies’ last warm-up game ahead of the Rugby World Cup. Only weeks earlier, Jones had opted for the nuclear option of discarding many senior Wallabies and selecting the youngest and most inexperienced World Cup squad in Australian rugby history.

The decision backfired for the Wallabies in France. And within weeks, Jones had resigned.
On Wednesday night, he was revealed as the new coach of Japan.

Aware the optics of Jones’ appointment might look unfavourable, particularly given Rugby Australia had signed a friendship pact with the Japanese union in July, Jones and JRFU bosses this week presented a narrative that attempted to explain away the steps to their second marriage. Jones previously coached Japan between 2012 and 2015.

Asked by this masthead about Jones’ first interview on August 25, JRFU chairman Kensuke Iwabuchi insisted on Wednesday evening – in a briefing to local media that this masthead also attended – that Jones was only approached via a recruitment agency and did not take part in a first-round interview before the World Cup. They sought Jones’ input because he was a previous Japan coach.

“In fact, there [was] no interview via Zoom,” Iwabuchi said in translated comments. “Odgers Berndtson, the recruiting company, has been in contact with many people. So it is the contact for collection [of] information, but it was not an interview as a head coach selection process.”

Iwabuchi claimed that while some candidates for the Japan job had two interviews, Jones only had one, in December.
At his Coogee Oval press conference in October, while still in charge of the Wallabies, Jones was asked directly if he had spoken with any third-party recruitment firms about the Japan job. “Not that I am aware of,” Jones said.

But speaking on Thursday night, Jones claimed the August 25 Zoom call was a conversation with the recruiters.

“I was asked by the recruitment agency to share my experiences with them on Japan,” he said. “Some people might have construed that as an interview. It certainly wasn’t an interview. The first interview I had with Japan was in December. That’s the only interview I’ve had.”

The version of events presented by Jones and the JRFU is at odds with evidence obtained by this masthead, via Japanese sources, that shows Iwabuchi and other high-ranking Japan officials on the Zoom call.

Japanese sources not authorised to speak publicly about the process have provided this masthead with screenshots showing that Jones was invited to a first round Zoom interview with the JRFU on August 25 and was a willing participant in the formal process for the role.
The Zoom invitation sent to Jones and other officials is titled: “JRFU: First round interview, Eddie Jones”. The date on the invitation is Friday August 25.

A Zoom link, which comes up in Japanese, is also provided. This masthead has verified the Zoom link, which goes to a meeting room. Staff members at the JRFU were able to access employees’ calendars and obtain details of the Zoom call. When news of the Zoom call became public, the JRFU interrogated employees. In the attendees section, the name Edward Jones appears. Jones accepted the Zoom invitation from a personal email address, which has been verified by this masthead.

This masthead reported on September 24 that Jones always intended on sitting a second interview. Applications for the role closed on August 18, according to a confidential candidate briefing document, obtained by this masthead.

The JRFU were prepared to conduct interviews at the World Cup. Officials were in France, ready to speak to candidates, who may have been nearby.

Once the Herald broke news of Jones’ first interview with Japan, the JRFU pivoted and put all interviews off until after the World Cup.

On Thursday night, the JRFU said no interviews took place during the World Cup.
Asked why it was labelled a first round interview, Iwabuchi told this masthead: “I don’t know what you are talking about”.

He added: “I told you we had a conversation with Eddie Jones and the recruitment company to get information.

“The interview process started after the World Cup. The selection committee made the shortlist after the World Cup, as they confirmed with the candidate if they wanted to apply to, and Eddie was on the short list.”

Odgers Berndtson was contacted for comment.

Iwabuchi said he did not believe the JRFU’s relationship with RA would be strained. Former RA chairman Hamish McLennan, who was influential in appointing Jones in January, declined to comment.

“I have spoken with Rugby AU directly and informed [them] about this head coach selection,” Iwabuchi said. “This Eddie head coach [appointment] will not affect anything negatively on the relationship between the nations.”

Whether Jones and the JRFU’s damage control narrative is accepted by a deeply sceptical rugby public remains to be seen.

Jones said he feels no guilt about his role in the process and wants to move on to help Japan rebuild. The saga may not fade that easily, however, with Jones potentially going the way of Stephen Bradbury and entering the vernacular.

After being appointed England’s women’s coach this week through to 2025, Jones’ former assistant John Mitchell was asked if he might jump ship if a major men’s role was offered.
Mitchell replied: “I am not an Eddie Jones. That’s not going to happen.”