Eddie Jones confirms interest in Japan coaching job

The Japanese door never closes on Eddie. It never will.

Rugby Australia on the other hand is the endless disaster that never stops.

Why cant the likes of Eales, Kearns, Herbert, Farr-Jones - seriously intelligent, serious gravitas guys take a hold of this mess and straighten out. I know easier then said bit it seems McLennan maybe just abit too ambitious for RA.

Additionally.

RA’s plight is indicative of a much wider malaise in rugby. NZ, Aus, SA, UK/Europe all seem to be struggling with issues surrounding the game and the elephant in the room seems to be the CTE mess that will have no resolution. Physical contact sports will never shake this off, ever, this has an immediate impact on engagement.

Incidents like Cane’s binning at the showpiece event, the once every 4 year rugby dance, the grand final…and Barnes feels obligated to nail the Cane followed by the VAR reinforcement, with no mitigation, allowance and so on. Jessie Kriel was perfectly fine by the way, on the counter at the ABs v Boks game last year, Kriel was so badly KO’d in the first half, he began doing the Haka, and stayed on. No sour grapes BUT if rugby is evolving in this way then god help us.

“Never had a meeting” 🤮

I think he implied that the reason he resigned the Australia job was that they could not deliver on contractual commitments related to centralization, presumably things like player contracting, match preparation, pathways and academies etc, in addition to financial resources. For someone with not too many RWC cycles left in his career, and with a stated goal of establishing Australia as RWC winners and the #1 ranked side, it would be hard to remain committed to a project that he considered to be structurally doomed. Specifically if RA agreed to certain things as part of his employment agreement that they are no longer able to deliver on then it’s not hard to imagine him declining to continue.

Having said that, I don’t believe he is being honest in his references to Japan. Most likely he already knew by this summer that RA were struggling to deliver on their promises. Most likely he would take an initial call, not a formal interview, from any major team under those circumstances. If they did enquire about his interest in coaching Japan then he would most likely have told them that he likes the Australia job but that there is a chance it will not work out.

He has used his words carefully when asked about Japan. He always says that he “has not received an offer”, and then changes the subject. Everyone knows that receiving an offer happens late in the courting process. Not sure why the journalists don’t double click on that comment and ask him when last he talked to Japan.

It’s a fair bet that he is deep in discussions with them, and has been for a while. And it would be surprising if we didn’t get an announcement of him being the new Japan coach within a week or two.

This man never ceases to amaze me