Eddie Jones: When Wilkinson is around, it pays to be on your game

Two games, two defeats: narrow defeats, to be sure, but frustrating all the same. This is no time for anyone at Saracens to overreact, let alone panic – radical changes of thinking in the first month of a season really aren't my style – but we could certainly use a win against Newcastle at Vicarage Road tomorrow. It's our first match in our own surroundings and a quality performance will get the crowd behind us, which always helps. And the crowd is likely to be a big one, thanks to the Jonny Wilkinson factor.

It's not a phenomenon we're particularly acquainted with in my corner of the planet, although rugby has thrown up its share of star names down the years in Australia and New Zealand. Up here, though, Wilkinson is obviously box office – a remarkable thing, given that it's very nearly five years since he dropped the goal that beat my Wallaby side in Sydney and secured the World Cup for England. When he plays, wherever it may be, attendances tend to rise sharply. That alone makes him a special player.

Actually, I think he's special in a number of ways – and I'm not talking about his image as a neat, meticulous, clean-cut role model. (Have you seen that new hairstyle of his? Those long, flowing locks? It's almost as if he's entering a second adolescence). I'm talking about the things he does on the field, rather than off it.

I've heard the descriptions applied to him by those who remain unconvinced by all the hype and hero worship – that he's mechanical, a robot, a player created in a laboratory somewhere – but while he's clearly a very methodical five-eighth who understands his own game and plays strictly to his strengths, you don't achieve the things he's achieved without having an instinct for the sport's subtleties and complexities. Newcastle scored 32 points in beating Northampton last weekend, and he was responsible for the vast majority of them. You don't do that at professional level by accident.

There are a couple of attributes I'd single out, aside from his great gifts as a kicker of the ball: his outstanding defence and his raw courage. It used to be that a team could virtually guarantee some joy for themselves by attacking their opponents through the No 10 channel. Wilkinson changed the rules. There were good defensive five-eighths before him, but none who slammed the door quite so hard. He set new standards in a vital part of the game – not something that is given to everyone who pulls on a pair of boots.

Linked to this is his bravery. Before the final in 2003, we felt confident that he was suffering with a dodgy shoulder and was probably 80 per cent fit, at best. As the game unfolded, it became clear that our little theory was correct. When Matt Giteau went on the field for the injured Stephen Larkham, he was instructed to test that shoulder of Wilkinson's at every opportunity. What happened? Wilkinson hit him so hard with a tackle that Matt was lifted clean off his feet and driven backwards. He has a lot of heart, this bloke, and I'm not sure he's ever had the credit he deserves for this aspect of his game.

Still, I feel we can minimise the Wilkinson effect if we get in there straight from the kick-off and work really hard to gain some ascendancy in the forward contest. We want to get off on the right foot in front of our own supporters and if we string together some results at Vicarage Road, that will provide us with a good platform from which to challenge for the honours we crave.

Mind you, this whole "home and away" thing is a new one on me. Back in Australia, it's not something teams think about: when I was coaching the Brumbies, it really didn't matter much if we were playing in our own stadium in Canberra, facing the Waratahs in Sydney or the Reds in Brisbane. Here, clubs have a home jumper and an away jumper – something that reinforces the thinking that you're a different side with a different mindset on the road than you are in your own backyard.

To my mind, the approach should always be the same, because ultimately the thing that matters is how good a team you are, and how successfully you put into the effect the things you've prepared in training. Having said that, this is England, not Australia, and these things run deep in the psyche. On Thursday night the team trained at Vicarage Road for the first time in a couple of years, and if that adds to the players' sense of certainty and security, well, who am I to tell them they're wrong?

Eddie Jones is the Saracens director of rugby and you can see the club in action on Sunday at Vicarage Road as they face Newcastle Falcons, kick-off 3pm.

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