Where it all began
I wasn’t from a rugby family, but sport in Australia is important: you played rugby in the winter and cricket in the summer. I was half-Japanese, half-Australian, so I wanted to be good at sport, part of the team, so I took up both.
My breakthrough moment
Because of my heritage I’ve always been an outsider and I never thought I belonged or had broken through. The only thing I wanted as a player was to play for Australia. I put all my heart, energy and ambition into that, but I wasn’t quite good enough.
The coach I looked up to
My teacher Geoff Mould. He was an Australian baseball player who listened to classical music and was well-read. He’d never played or coached rugby until he was transferred to a rugby school aged 35. He was inspirational, big on moving the ball quickly. Training was fun, he had a command about him, he cared for his players and we ended up New South Wales champions.
Rugby never got any better than…
The 2003 World Cup semi-final when Australia, big underdogs, played New Zealand, who’d beaten us by 50 points five months earlier. Through a combination of coaching and great play, we defeated them. Then I thought I was part of something different.
The morning I had the hangover to end all hangovers
A week later, after the World Cup final against England. We battled for 100 minutes, but weren’t good enough. When the winners are going up to collect their medals, you feel like you’re the only person in the world. Worst I’ve ever felt.
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My favourite stadium
Brighton’s football stadium where Japan beat South Africa in the 2015 World Cup. The atmosphere was fantastic, I’ve never known anything like it. I can still feel the joy and ecstasy at the end of a game which will always make me tingle.
My least favourite stadium
Ellis Park, Johannesburg. It’s the toughest. It’s always a laborious bus trip out there. As you drive in, there’s Afrikaners having braais at the roadside and it’s quite intimidating. Inside it’s a real cauldron, you have to walk down a long tunnel and a set of stairs to get there. Oh, I’ve never won there either, mate. That’s 100 per cent part of it too . . .
My toughest opponent
As a player, Sean Fitzpatrick. He was aggressive, good at gamesmanship and he patronised me. As a coach, All Black Steve Hansen. It goes back to 2000 when I coached Brumbies and we played his Crusaders in the Super Rugby final. They outsmarted us, he outsmarted me and he outcoached me.
Funniest moment from my career
Extra time in the 2003 World Cup final when it looked like we were going to score. The bench stood up off our chairs but they were folding. Glen Ella had put on a bit of weight and when he sat down, he fell on his backside. One of the most tense periods in a World Cup final and we’re falling abut laughing. We didn’t score either.
I learnt most from
Two things. Being sacked by Australia. You’ve never coached until you’ve been sacked. I blamed other people but the performances and team were my responsibility. The other thing was my stroke in 2013. I thought I was superman and could do anything. I studied religion and learned to look after myself better. I was a driven, focused coach: my stroke made me more driven and focused. I thought I was a good coach, but now I don’t: I’m just striving to get a little better every day.
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What I enjoy watching/listening to/reading
Apart from BBC News, the only television programmes I’ve ever watched are House Of Cards and Jesse Stone, where Tom Selleck plays an alcoholic policeman who’s been sacked and broken up with his wife. I really enjoyed that. I’m a massive Bruce Springsteen fan and I love his last album, Letter To You. I’m re-reading Jim Collins’s Good To Great.
My guilty pleasure
Dark chocolate above 75 per cent cocoa once a night, five nights a week.
My favourite meal
Going to a sashimi restaurant in Japan. I’m not a dessert man. Once I stopped playing I made a commitment not to eat sweet things and I’ve stuck to that 99.8 per cent of the time. Chocolate you say? That’s medicine, good for the blood pressure. Red wine to drink, but I’m no connoisseur.
The day I knew the game was up
I wanted to play in England before I finished, so I joined Leicester Tigers aged 31. I was like an old motor car, mate: every week something went wrong. My body was telling me it had had enough. I could have kept on, but I wasn’t satisfied with my performance or drive. In my last game, I hesitated before diving onto a loose ball. I knew then it was right to stop.
My one regret
As a player, losing 12 months sulking when I missed out on Australian selection. I didn’t give 100 per cent, I wasn’t a good team-mate, I was more concerned with my predicament. I did the same when I got sacked as Australia coach. If you lose that time, you never get it back. It was my dream job and when it was taken away, you think “what is there left?”.
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Best advice for a young sportsperson
Be ambitious. Be courageous. Have a plan.
• Leadership: Lessons From My Life In Rugby by Eddie Jones is out now (Pan Macmillan, £20)
Decoding Eddie by Nick Greenslade
So what did we learn from this exchange with the England coach? Well, we can see that he is a lot more relaxed and expansive in this Q&A format than when being interrogated by the rugby media about the state of the national team, when he can be testy and abrasive.
Jones was speaking as part of the publicity drive for his new book about leadership, so it’s interesting that he says he is re-reading Jim Collins’s Good To Great, which deals with similar themes. For those who don’t know, the book, published 20 years ago, analyses management approaches in business to explain why some companies are able to make the step from ‘good to great’, identifying seven key characteristics. Good to great could be a neat description of the journey Jones hopes to take England on between now and the 2023 World Cup.
It’s no surprise that he says of his toughest opponent, All Black hooker Sean Fitzpatrick: “He was aggressive, good at gamesmanship and he patronised me.” That’s what nearly everyone (including referees) who came across him during his playing days says of Fitzy — and they are invariably saying these things as compliments.
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In a world of iPlayer, Netflix and Amazon Prime, it does seem a little surprising that outside the news the only things he has watched on TV are House of Cards and Jesse Stone (no, us neither) but, as numerous assistant coaches have testified, he is intensely devoted to his job.
“Red wine to drink but I’m no connoisseur,” he says of what he would drink with his favourite meal. In his book, Loose Head, the England prop Joe Marler reveals that his coach’s preferred tipple is a Merlot and his “go-to emoji”, apparently, is a glass of red wine. Jones even passed on some free bottles he received to Marler. “Eddie may be a cheeky f***er,” the Quins man concludes, “but he knows the value of sharing a drink like no other manager I’ve played under.”
