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RFU issue statement on Jones' latest overseas coaching activities
By Liam Heagney
England boss Eddie Jones is off on his overseas travels again, the RFU confirming that he is currently working in Italy and will also be in Georgia later this month, but his activities won't solely take place overseas as he is expected to continuing visiting Gallagher Premiership clubs having also visited Manchester United, the football club, to observe their pre-season training.
It was early June when Jones last addressed his coaching activities outside the remit of his England head coach position. The Australian fronted media to defend his extracurricular coaching following the avalanche of criticism that accompanied the revelation that he was coaching at Beauden Barrett’s Suntory Sungoliath in Japan less than a week after the RFU published its review on recent England’s fifth-place Six Nations campaign.
“I’m a coach, I have got to practise coaching. If you are a golfer you play golf, if you’re a coach you coach and I only get twelve weeks a year to coach with England so I have got to use my time in between to practise coaching and find better ways to coach," explained Jones at the time, going on to reveal he was just back from a trip to Leicester.
"I spent the day up there with him [Steve Borthwick]. Managed to do a little bit of coaching. I know I am not supposed to coach another team so I apologise now, I apologise for coaching another team but I was able to do a little bit of practice there and it was good. It’s great to see those young players come through."
Two months on from that revelation, the RFU have now issued a statement outlining what Jones is up to this August. "England head coach Eddie Jones will travel to visit a number of rugby teams this month," began the statement.
"He will first head to Treviso, Italy, where he will spend three days with Benetton (August 4-6) before visiting Georgia Rugby in Tbilisi to work alongside their coaches (August 18-20). Jones will continue to visit Premiership clubs, including monthly coaching visits to Leicester Tigers. He was recently invited to watch Manchester United’s pre-season training when the Premier League side were based at Pennyhill Park."
Jones added: “These visits to other clubs, countries and sports are a great chance for coaches to increase knowledge and share knowledge. It’s important we give back to the game, such as my work in supporting emerging nations like Georgia. Over the next two months, the focus will move to Premiership clubs, meeting with the directors of rugby and players and seeing how pre-season training is going.”
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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