Eddie Jones' crazy attack on private schools shows he doesn't get English rugby
Oliver Brown in today's Daily Telegraph.
In any sensible regime, the head coach of England rugby would no sooner belittle independent schools than a Wimbledon executive would poke fun at Roger Federer. There are certain sacred cows that are simply not worth skewering. Eddie Jones, alas, is a man so wedded to his disruptive instincts, so heedless about alienating every constituency in the English game, that he has lost any trace of an emotional radar. His argument that the over-reliance on privately educated players needs to be “blown up” reflects somebody who, with just 14 months left on his Twickenham contract, is determined to burn the place down as he leaves.
For it is not just the Welsh, the Irish or the fourth estate – all past victims of Jones’ lacerating tongue – he has risked antagonising this time. It is the bulk of Twickenham’s matchday crowd. Run a rule across the 82,000 there on any given winter Saturday and a high proportion, if not a majority, will have attended fee-paying schools. In his book Among the Fans, Patrick Collins observed how, as recently as the Nineties, it was possible to construct a physical portrait of Twickenham Man: “Waxed jacket by Burberry, tweed hat by Dunn’s, shirt by Viyella, complexion by John Courage.”
Caricatures aside, these are the people whom Jones offends at his peril, England loyalists who over the past two years have started muttering about his inability to capitalise on the deepest talent pool in world rugby. The blame, Jones contends, lies with the school system. At Harrow, he says, you lead too “closeted” a life to develop the sharpest leadership skills on the field. This drew disdain from Barnaby Lenon, a former Harrow headmaster, who dismissed Jones’ remarks as a “whinge”. But it explains why Maro Itoje, an Old Harrovian and Jones’ most reliably talismanic player, has still not been entrusted with the captaincy.
For the Rugby Football Union to rebuke Jones publicly is a sign that they know he has crossed a line. They are acutely wary of any statements that might be construed as censure – indeed, it took two limp Six Nations before chief executive Bill Sweeney dipped a toe into the turbulent debate over his future. Here, the RFU confirmed Sweeney had spoken to Jones, reaffirming their faith in independent schools’ record of cultivating players. At a time when Henry Arundell, another Harrow alumnus, is being touted as a star of next year’s World Cup, they clearly do not need the figure in charge trashing the institution that nurtured him.
It is apt to ask exactly how Jones’ hostility to private schools has arisen. He might claim that the dependency on such schools is a peculiarly English obsession, mocking the priority to “play the game properly, old chap”. He insists that he is a true Australian meritocrat, that he cares only for what players can contribute to his team, not for their educational routes. But Australia has never been as class-blind as it likes to appear. One old saying in the country holds that in Melbourne, people always ask where you went to school, whereas in Sydney, they want to know how much your house is worth.
In Jones’ native Sydney, rugby union is disproportionately skewed towards the few expensive schools that still offer it to their pupils, in an era when league and Australian Rules dominate. This became a key element of the inquest into Australia’s dismal results against the All Blacks in 2016: why were only six of the Wallabies’ 23-man squad from state schools? Even England, for all Jones’ grumbling, now have 11.
So, the idea that his team are held back by a distinctively English structural failing will not wash. For Jones, you sense, sentiments on this issue run deeper, fuelled by a distaste for anything resembling privilege. Even at 62, he is still essentially that same little firebrand from the rough end of Sydney’s southern beaches, abhorring the notion of entitlement. Everything he achieved at Matraville High, a school not considered part of the city’s rugby fabric until he and the brilliant Ella brothers came along, was, he would later reflect, earned rather than handed to him on a plate.
All his life, he has scorned the silver spoon. He only thrived as deputy headmaster of an international school, he explained, because he had the gumption to forge his own path. As such, a suspicion of private schools has taken root. You can detect it as a running thread throughout his autobiography, My Life and Rugby. Of his first encounter with the independent St Joseph’s at Matraville, he betrays an inferiority complex, writing: “They exuded health, wealth, strength and an overpowering confidence. We looked like we were from the wrong side of the tracks.”
It helps illuminate why he feels such a profound affinity with Owen Farrell, his first choice as England captain. He first encountered him coaching Saracens, when Farrell was just 17, and the symmetries in their working-class upbringings brought an instant bond. Describing Farrell and his father Andy, he said: “They were different to many of the other players, who had enjoyed the privileges of the English private-school system.”
It is almost pathological, this preoccupation of his. A crucial aspect of leadership, which Jones claims private-school alumni so conspicuously lack, is emotional intelligence, the art of knowing your audience. In this job, though, it is a skill that eludes him. After 6 and a half years, the longest he has spent in any rugby post, he continues to find the English utterly perplexing.
By his own admission, he still does not understand the codes of politeness, or the habit of avoiding confrontation by miring everything in subtext. If Jones wants to tear a strip off somebody, he will do so without a backward glance. Once, such brashness was integral to his genius. Now, he is more of a one-man wrecking ball, ruffling feathers at every turn. Jones imagines, through his bracing critique of selective schools, that he is offering a vital state-of-the-nation address. But it comes across, with his usual absence of nuance, as inverted snobbery.
Always a Wasp
