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The 'discreet' opinion Jones has formed about Rennie's Australia
By Liam Heagney
Eddie Jones believes that rugby in Australia is in a very different place compared to the last time England toured his native country to take on the Wallabies. Travelling down under as the Six Nations champions in 2016, the English recorded a 3-0 Test series victory over a Wallabies team that was under the baton of Michael Cheika at the time.
Cheika has since taken on the role of coaching Argentina, with Dave Rennie succeeding him with the Wallabies, and England boss Jones has contrasted what faced his team six years ago with what they are likely to come across in July.
“Australia are in a different position now than they were in 2016,” said Jones on Tuesday after he unveiled a 36-strong mini-camp training squad that will begin tour preparations next Sunday in London.
“They were an established team coming off the back of a World Cup final where they had done exceedingly well. If you look at the Super Rugby teams at the moment they are very young teams with a lot of good young players coming through.
“I am not going to try and pick Dave Rennie’s team for him but it looks like they will have a fairly young team that will play that traditional Dave Rennie type of rugby, a lot of ball movement, a lot of sequence plays, so the challenge in the game will be different and the game is changing considerably.
“The game is getting more discreet. I watched a (Super Rugby Pacific) game on Saturday, the first half took 65 minutes because the referee went to the TMO for nearly every decision so the game is becoming more powerful with shorter blocks of intense periods of play - so it is much different from when we went there in 2016.
“We have got to make sure that we prepare well for that sort of rugby. Fast pitches, the first game is in Perth, it’s an AFL ground, very fast, they are going to have 60,000 screaming Australians there. They have already sold the game out. It’s fantastic for rugby.”
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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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