No need to read beyond the headline with Jones

Colin Boag

Eddie Jones, master of creating headlines and tweaking tails, did it again when he suggested that the English independent schools created a cloistered environment, and didn’t give their rugby-playing pupils the necessary resilience and leadership skills. Predictably some bit on this, but they really should have known better.

What head coaches say on wider rugby issues is largely irrelevant, as they live and die not by headlines, but by results. Shame on the RFU for chastising Jones for his harmless remark.

One of those who bit was Sir Clive Woodward, who posed a ridiculous question about Jones, asking, “what right does he have to belittle the English game?” Woodward will always be respected for coaching Martin Johnson’s team to victory in 2003, but that was a long time ago, and while he essentially walked away from rugby to pontificate from the sidelines, Jones, the coach of the defeated Wallabies team, has stuck with the game through thick and thin, and should be applauded for that.

If England win the World Cup in France next year then Jones will be a national hero, but if they fail, then no-one will be thinking about his views on private education, although I bet you Woodward will have something to say about it!