The return of Eddie Jones as Wallabies coach brings hope to Australia, confusion in South Africa

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The Rugby Championship which starts this weekend provides a chance to experience the second coming of Eddie Jones as Wallabies coach and look for signs of the amazing transformation he is expected to perform.

Jones has been handed the task of coaching to this year’s World Cup a Wallabies team that is ranked seventh and coming off a 7-7 record in test matches in 2022.

When Jones last coached the Wallabies between 2001 and 2005 he had early success, leading the Australians to a Tri-Nations title and to the World Cup final at home in 2003.

He had immediate success as an adviser to the 2007 Springboks, who won the World Cup that year, and was instrumental after taking over the Japan national team in 2013 and coaching them to an historic win over the Springboks at the 2015 World Cup. He guided England to the World Cup final in 2019.

The record shows the longer Jones remains in a coaching role the more his results become subject to the law of diminishing returns. But he does, usually, have an early impact. And that's what Australians will be looking for signs of during the Rugby Championship and the World Cup.

The Wallabies begin the Championship and their road to the World Cup when they play the Springboks on Saturday at Pretoria's Loftus Versfeld stadium, where they've never won a test. That makes it the perfect site for Jones to demonstrate the beginning of the Wallaby transformation.

Jones, who replaced Dave Rennie as Wallabies coach not long after ending his tenure in England, is famous for getting his players extremely fit and for his close management of most aspects of the game plan. He also knows the importance of mental attitude.

“First you have to think you can win,” Jones told reporters in South Africa. “The most important thing is that that is the mindset you’ve got to be in.

“You’ve got to be thinking that, and we’re 100% committed to winning. Then you’ve got to execute a game plan where you win enough possession that you can push (the opposition) to the other end of the field and keep them under pressure.”

Jones said Saturday’s match, whatever the outcome, is only the first step on Australia’s road to the World Cup at which they hope to stage a “smash and grab raid” on the Webb Ellis Trophy.

“We don’t need to get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “We want to get out of the gates quickly but sometimes the sprint doesn’t win the marathon.

“We’re not focused on South Africa, we’re focused on ourselves. This is a game about us. We want to put a new standard of Wallaby rugby forward and set the tone for our campaign.”

The All Blacks also are in need of transformation after a 2022 season in which they sustained historic home losses to Ireland and Argentina and also dropped to their lowest-ever world ranking. Because of those losses and others that preceded them, the “All Blacks aura,” whatever that is, appears to have been tarnished.

The coaching change for the All Blacks won’t come until after the World Cup when Scott Robertson will take over from Ian Foster regardless of how the team performs in France. To calm any disquiet New Zealand fans might still be feeling after last year, Foster needs a good result in the Rugby Championship. For the All Blacks, that begins with a match against Argentina on Saturday.

“You can fudge it and say you want to build and say it’s all about the World Cup and, let’s be honest, we all know it’s the trophy that matters the most for us at the end of the year,” Foster said. “The best way for us to prepare for that is we want to be dominant from test one.

“We want to use these opportunities ahead of us in the Rugby Championship ... to really test our combinations, to challenge ourselves. I don’t think you really test yourself well enough if you give yourself a mental out of saying the game doesn’t matter. It does matter for us.”

The Springboks’ focus is more on continuity than transformation. South Africa started strongly and won the 2019 Rugby Championship and went on to win the World Cup. It hopes to do so again.

“This is going to be a challenging competition with all the teams looking to build momentum before the World Cup so we have to hit the ground running if we want to be in the running to win the title,” coach Jacques Nienaber said.

Nienaber said the Springboks were unsure how to prepare for a Wallabies team coached by Jones.

“It is going to be tough for us to prepare for what Australia will bring,” he said. “We are not sure if it will be more of an Eddie with England mindset or if it will be a more Dave Rennie mindset.

“The key thing for us is to focus on ourselves and make sure that we get our stuff right, because we will only be guessing what they will bring from their side.”

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