Jacques Nienaber explains a Springboks 'innovation' he won't forget

Former Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber has reflected on how Felix Jones, the current England defence coach, lit up the South Africa attack at France 2023.

Jones, who joined the Boks as defence consultant in 2019, was working as attack coach when he and Nienaber went their separate ways following last October’s Rugby World Cup final win over the All Blacks in Paris.

Nienaber is now senior coach at Irish province Leinster, succeeding Stuart Lancaster who switched to Racing 92, while Irishman Jones has taken on Kevin Sinfield’s defence coach brief with England.

His blitz rearguard was essential a few weeks ago when the English toppled Ireland at Twickenham to prevent them from winning unprecedented back-to-back Guinness Six Nations Grand Slams.

Nienaber has now spoken about his working relationship with Jones while the pair were with South Africa and he praised the former Ireland full-back for the creativity that was important in the Springboks pipped host nation France by a point in the World Cup quarter-finals.

In an exclusive interview in the Irish Daily Star, Nienaber said about Jones: “The first thing was his preparation and his work ethic was next level, he made sure that the players were prepared and knew what was coming up.

“I don’t want to give too much away but when he came in in 2019, he only literally joined us in the World Cup, so he met us when we played the warm-up game against Japan. So the lads didn’t know him, he just did the World Cup with us and, obviously, we had a win there.

“And then after that, covid happened and then British and Irish Lions in 2021, for which we probably went a couple of steps back, because we wanted to beat the British and Irish Lions.

"I would probably say Felix, in reality, took charge of our attack in 2022, that was when he could actually start being creative in the things that he wanted to do on attack.

“I thought by the back end of 2023 there was a lot of creativity, which people probably wouldn’t have seen but if you think now on the quarter-final of the World Cup, South Africa taking a quick tap-penalty is probably something unheard of.

"For our last try, Eben Etzebeth’s score that actually won us the quarter-final against France, there was a lot of innovation that he brought in there.”

• Click here to read the entire Jacques Nienaber interview