No wallflower, no rose - how Eddie Jones put the bite back into England

Jones maintains his players are still too diffident for his Aussie liking, despite Jim Telfer's verbal attack on the arrogance of English rugby

Eddie Jones has removed England's Mr Nice Guy attitude to give his players a degree of arrogance (Getty)

Eddie Jones was, rather inappropriately, seated beneath two paintings of flowers – wallflowers – when, having taken apart Donald Trump and Scottish coach Jim Telfer in the conversation, he moved onto the issue of how very reserved he has found England and its rugby internationals to be.

There was some irony about this, given that Telfer had made English arrogance one of the topics of the week in his denigration of the “superior” Twickenham crowd with their “bags of money and bags of this and that,” as he put it a few days ago. It was actually more arrogance that Jones is looking for.

His assertion a year or so back that England spent too much time trying to be liked - "going around the world apologising" – provoked plenty of conversation when mild-mannered Gareth Southgate was appointed England football manager. Jones’ ‘around the world’ observation was put to him and Southgate replied: "Well, Eddie won't do that, will he?" The footballers revealed that they discussed at one team meeting how arrogance was not good.

Ahead a Six Nations opener against a French side who in their stylish rugby pomp were arrogance personified, Jones maintained that his players are still too diffident for his Aussie liking, even though he had watered down the vocabulary from 18 months ago. ‘We want our players to be deliberately… not arrogant… but forthright,” he declared.

So spoke the coach who is still nursing the remains of a black eye which he has not entirely explained away. A slip in the shower and a training ground mishap were his contradictory explanations last week. It gives him the look of the scrapper he has always been and the evidence of defensive coach Paul Gustard’s team-talk suggests that he has already taken the politesse out of what Stuart Lancaster bequeathed him. Gustard reminded the players on Tuesday that England have fought 20 wars against the French, by way of reminder that the side Guy Novès brings to Twickenham do not tend to lay down arms. Gustard is a stickler for details like that. He says that the precise number of ‘wars’ depends on whether you count the Hundred Years War as three or four battles. “You’ll have to go through that with him. I got lost,” Jones said.

The fighting quality is written through so much of Jones’ body of work, too. The perseverance with Dylan Hartley as captain despite another six-week ban which only expired last week. The demeanour on Thursday of Joe Marler, who is no shrinking violet. The now fabled training sessions in which the intensity level always has to be higher than that of the ensuing game. And the way Jones keeps his players’ at arms’ length, never seeking to foster affection. No sentiment.

Jones related how he had been looking at a piece in the Washington Post in about the relationship between Tom Brady and Bill Belichick - captain and coach of New England Patriots, finalists in this weekend’s Super Bowl. “It’s all about business,” Jones said. “They’ve got no personal relationship. They’ve been together umpteen seasons and they’ve never been out to dinner. They’re not friendly at all, but they know what they’ve got to do. That is the attitude we want in this team. It’s nice if people like you but for us, our business is to win games of rugby, because that’s how we make rugby popular.”

It’s the same with Jones and the writers, with whom he has far less interest than Lancaster in forming bonds, for all that his utterances are journalistic gold-dust. (“I don’t know about that Donald Trump stuff. I don’t know how it got started and it has. He has persuaded them to vote in a certain way” was another of Thursday’s) Behind the soundbites, he is far less generous with the provision of technical detail.

All that needs to be said is that Jones’ response was not pretty when, while he was going over certain aspects of Saturday’s game plan this week, one of the players said: “Yeah, we know what to do.” “That’s being complacent, so we knocked that on the head,” Jones said, deadpan. “We got the sledgehammer out and knocked it on the head!”

Jim Telfer launched a scathing verbal attack on Jones and English rugby fans earlier this week (Getty)

We haven’t seen all of his spots yet, of course, because England have only known the bright side of life under him. The reigning Six Nations champions have secured 14 consecutive wins, averaged nearly 40 points a game this autumn, more than any side in the world, and scored 4.8 tries per match.

But though the mood in Paris is one of resignation to a winless Six Nations run at Twickenham extending into a 13th year, France are beginning to discover a little of the old flair under Novès. England’s injuries – Antony Watson, the Vunipola brothers, Chris Robshaw and George Kruis - are also providing some succour among the visitors. Being without his two main ball carriers, main line-out operative and No 6 represents serious damage.

Jones rejected being likened to President Donald Trump (Getty)

Jones is willing to admit that the tribal loyalties attached to the Six Nations also surprised him. “You always sense it’s a special game when you walk into a press conference and you’re struggling to get to the front desk,” he said. “I can still recall that little Scottish boy yelling out ‘We’re going to stuff you. We’re going to stuff you.’ He was right into it - full on. He needed grabbing by the back of neck and pulling back in the line. Coaching England you feel the other countries certainly enjoy the rivalry against England. They see England as the gifted one. They’ve got the biggest union. They’ve got Twickenham, the most money. So it’s a little bit us versus them.”

He was 57 this week, and though the players marked the fact with a joke on the so-called tumble in the shower, there was, from his perspective, an appropriate lack of sentiment.

“Well it was a Monday,” Jones related. “And Monday’s a pretty busy day. I had a good preparation day, at the end of it the boys gave me a bathmat which was quite humorous and which I’ll definitely use. It was just a normal day in the office.”