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Exclusive: Eddie Jones was England's fallback option
By Jon Newcombe
Nick Mallett had not one but two sliding doors moments when it came to dealings with the RFU.
Highly respected as a player and as a coach, the Oxford-educated 68-year-old has revealed in the latest episode of RugbyPass TV’s Boks Office how close he was to becoming the head coach of the country of his birth.
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The RFU could have had the dream ticket of Mallett and Wayne Smith running the show at the home 2015 World Cup but chose Stuart Lancaster instead. And they could also have been spared the drama of the Eddie Jones regime had Mallett said yes to their offer second time around.
However, by then, the timing was all wrong and the chances of appointing Mallett, who led the Springboks on a record 17-match winning run in his three-year tenure as head coach between 1997-2000, had gone.
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“At the end of 2011, I was approached and I was interviewed for it, and that’s when they gave it to Stuart Lancaster. I actually thought I was in with a shout. I had Wayne Smith who was going to coach with me and I thought that we would have had a good four years,” he told former Springboks Jean de Villiers and Schalk Burger.
“And then they asked when Lancaster didn’t get them out of their pool in 2015. My agent got a call to say they are offering you the job. They said, ‘you don’t have to interview for it, we feel we made a mistake last time’.
“But by that time I’d had four years at SuperSport. I phoned up Wayne Smith and said, ‘what’s your story?’ and he said, ‘I am tied in with New Zealand and I wouldn’t look at it again’.
“Your assistant coach is very important, the guy you work with is very, very important, so I turned it down and that’s when they gave it to Eddie.”
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Hereford-born Mallett ended up coaching Stade Francais in France before being appointed as head coach of Italy, a position which he held for four years, between 2007 and 2011.
Other than the Barbarians and the World XV he hasn’t coached internationally since but Mallett doesn’t look back with any regrets at how things panned out, especially with the high level of scrutiny that Test coaches have to endure.
“The fact that I am sitting here now, I’ve had two heart ablations, is probably because I turned it down,” he said of the missed opportunities with England.
“I get really passionately involved with rugby so if I invest as much as that and suddenly there’s social media and there’s criticism and all the stress, it is just horrible.
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“It’s like a boxer, when you start out you can take punches and then suddenly at the end of your career you can’t take them as well anymore.”
Watch the highly acclaimed five-part documentary Chasing the Sun 2, chronicling the journey of the Springboks as they strive to successfully defend the Rugby World Cup, free on RugbyPass TV (*unavailable in Africa)
I think Eddie Jones is a very good coach. Look at England 2016 - 2019 and Japan 2015 and Australia from 2002 - 2003. What's also obvious is that he is a dictator and has a short shelf life. His second tenure as Wallaby coach was mission impossible, so what did he do? He blooded as much of the next generation as he could and dropped the last hurrah super stars and the Aussie media didn't like that he wrote rwc 2023 off. I think the ARU ought to put their hands up and admit Jones inherited a shambles, but instead they let Eddie be the scape goat. I'm not keen on his sack anyone who crosses him man management style, but you can't write him off as an international rugby coach. I think Engiand would have had a better chance in 2023 if the RFU hadn't sacked him 10 months out from a world Cup, England's game plan in the run up to 2023 was so basic I think he was hiding his plans for the world Cup. Who knows? I guessing, but you have to admit England's game plan was stripped back to point where they were just turning up and going through the motions robotically. Anyway the RFU sacked him. They did exactly what Jones did to those old wallabie superstars. They wrote off a world cup to give Borthwick an extra ten months of test match experience. Not sure if it is working going on Saturday's result.
that's bizarre.
As Eddie Jones showed us in 2022 and 2023, great coaches don't stay great forever. Mallet was a properly world class coach in 1998, and never hit the same heights after that.
Yeah, this a real "what if" article. I'm not going to guess if Nick would have been better than Eddie. It's pointless, and we're talking about the coach who selected an Italian flanker at scrum half in the six nations.
if the clock could be turned back, Jones should still have been given the top job, to be assisted by Farrell, Borthwick, Catt, & Rowntree, and after 2019 he should have been replaced by Farrell.