On Tuesday the 6th December the RFU dismissed head coach Eddie Jones, 9 months ahead of the next World Cup. Jones had been in charge of the England Rugby Union team for 7 years, and led England through some dramatic highs and lows: a particularly memorable high being reaching the 2019 World Cup final with a triumph over New Zealand in a brilliant semi-final, and the ultimate low being the awful performance to make the 6th test loss of this year against South Africa- what would be his last game in charge.
Did the RFU make the right decision?
Personally, after watching the South Africa game at Twickenham, and having watched many previous games, I believe that his sacking was the right decision: I think it has been some time since we have played good rugby, and thus his sacking was arguably long overdue. Although I don’t think our current squad is great (nor as good as our squad that reached the World Cup Final in 2019), I believe it is strong enough that we should be a competitive match against teams like South Africa, particularly at home. In the recent Autumn nation series, England played four games, winning one drawing one and losing two. Overall, I thought we played poorly, with our only decent performance against Japan and for the final 20 minutes against New Zealand. We lacked pace and threat in our backs, which ultimately Jones must be at fault for as he chose to keep playing players like Jack Nowell – although a brilliant player, one who is getting older and losing his pace – instead of giving other, younger players a chance.
Having said that, we must equally recognise Jones’ success: he has the best win ratio of any England manager with 73% (though his win rate has declined in the past couple years). Following Jones’ last game in charge against South Africa, there were reports that there were lots of boos from the fans after the game. However, I was at Twickenham for that game, and I don’t think that there were that many boos, at least in the section I was in. If anything, the fans seemed to be having a good time, as lots of fans remained in the stadium and partied and sung for a while after the game- so I do not think that is totally fair to say that Jones lost the confidence of the England fans. In addition, arguably it is risky to be changing coaches just 9 months before the next World Cup, as you want a team and coach which is settled and coherent.
But overall, I believe that the RFU made the right decision to let Jones go: I think that with the squad we have, we should be playing better, more exciting rugby, as after all, it costs a lot to watch England play at Twickenham, so the fans deserve to watch an entertaining game.
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