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Danny Care delivers a brutal insight to Eddie Jones' England

Danny Care at work with Eddie Jones in 2017 (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Former England scrum-half Danny Care has delivered a withering critique of Eddie Jones. The 37-year-old Harlequins No9 retired from international rugby earlier this year and an extract from his new book, Everything Happens for a Reason: My Life in Rugby, has been published by The Times in London.

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The Ebury Spotlight publication, which launches on November 7, details how the current Japan boss, who is due to bring his team to London on November 24 to face Steve Borthwick’s England, ruled with an iron fist, leaving English players “desperate not to get dropped for all the wrong reasons, which made for a toxic environment”.

Saturday’s explosive book extract began with Jones’ treatment of prop Kieran Brookes and went on to detail other awkward moments during the early part of a tenure that began when he was appointed as Stuart Lancaster’s successor for the 2016 Six Nations.

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Care surmised: “When England were winning games, which they almost always did in the first two years of Eddie’s reign, it was easier to excuse his bad behaviour.

“But when performances started to slip, as they did in the 2018 Six Nations, when we managed only two wins and finished fifth, Eddie’s abrasiveness really began to jar. Analysts would be visibly shaking during presentations because they were so scared of getting something wrong…

“Eddie picked on the odd player but mostly it was just common or garden piss-taking, the kind of stuff that we were all used to. How he treated his staff – coaches, analysts, medical staff, communications officers – was a different thing completely.”

It was November 2018 when Care himself was axed from the squad via a curt voice message. “Danny, Eddie here. Didn’t think you were sharp enough at the weekend, I don’t need you this week. Cheers.”

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Care felt he deserved better than this and confronted Jones at the team hotel when he went to collect his belongings. “Eddie,” I said, “I just feel that dropping me is a bit harsh. I don’t understand how I can go from starting against Japan to not being involved at all.

“We have done well over the last few weeks. We beat South Africa, we nearly beat New Zealand. The Japan game was always going to be tough because we changed a lot of players. And Japan played well. But we still managed to get back into it and win the game.”

“I thought I’d made my case quite eloquently, but Eddie just said, ‘That’s a s**t attitude, mate. That’s justified my decision’.”

Care was left in the international rugby wilderness until the summer tour of 2022, but that experience didn’t go well either as the scrum-half was subbed off just 35 minutes into a game with Australia.

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“One of Eddie’s long-suffering analysts showed me a piece of paper listing all the players and how they needed to play. And in a gold box was written ‘30-minute substitution’ and three names: Mako Vunipola, Jamie George and Danny Care.

“It later transpired that Eddie had been speaking to some Aussie rules coaching guru, who had told him that if your team is slightly off it in the early stages of a game, you’ll get a more positive reaction from the players if you hook someone before half-time rather than during or just after the break.”

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Comments

4 Comments
B
Bull Shark 18 days ago

Don’t think Danny Care needed to write a book for us to all know Eddie Jones is a pr1ck.

E
Ed the Duck 18 days ago

True. But birds of a feather and all that…

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JW 3 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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