Is it too late? Would sacking Eddie Jones now, a little less than 18 months before England play their opening World Cup match against Argentina in Marseilles, risk knocking the team even further off course than the unenviable position they find themselves in after a second successive Six Nations flop, during which they scored three tries in their four meaningful games?
The RFU, it seems, is inclined to believe in Jones’s longer-term plan, with its focus firmly on next year’s World Cup, the details of which remain a mystery to everyone beyond the head coach’s inner circle and, presumably, Bill Sweeney, the RFU chief executive. The alternative would be to take a dramatically different course, appointing a coach, who would be asked to turn England’s fortunes round in 18 months. That timeframe would permit only 12 competitive matches for a new man to revive England from No 5 in the world rankings, attempting to make up ground on the likes of France, grand-slam winners last weekend, who have been making tangible progress over the past two years.
But such a revival has been done before. It has been done, in fact, during each of the two previous World Cup cycles, and it has been done with conspicuous success. When Rassie Erasmus took charge of South Africa in March 2018, he had 18 months to turn round a team that had slipped to sixth in the world rankings. On their recent autumn tour of Europe under Allister Coetzee, his predecessor, the Springboks had lost to Wales and suffered a record 38-3 defeat by Ireland.
Those setbacks followed a 57-0 defeat by New Zealand and the South African authorities decided that a radical change of direction was required if they were going to have any chance of winning the 2019 World Cup in Japan. Erasmus was conveniently close at hand, having left his position as director of rugby at Munster to become the Springboks’ director of rugby, to which he added the head coach’s duties when it was decided that Coetzee’s race was run.
Erasmus’s first game in charge was a one-off Test against Wales in Washington DC, a much derided fixture, but one that gave a new head coach with little time on his hands the chance to experiment. He picked 13 new caps in his matchday squad, among them Makazole Mapimpi, the wing who would go on to play an important role for Erasmus.
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Although he was clearly playing catch-up with other teams, Erasmus felt that his intimate knowledge of the South African system, having previously worked in a variety of roles both for SA Rugby and provincial teams, gave him an immediate head start. “I understood all the franchises, all the coaches, all the players,” Erasmus said. “Most of the guys I had coached before. I guess that nullified the time span a bit.”
After a narrow defeat by Wales, his next engagement was a three-match home series against England. At scrum half, Erasmus reintroduced Faf de Klerk, who had not played Test rugby for 19 months. As captain, he appointed Siya Kolisi, the first black man to lead the Springboks. South Africa won the series 2-1 and went on to beat the All Blacks away for the first time in nine years during the Rugby Championship.
Within the first few months, the Springboks had been transformed. A little more than a year later, they would beat England again, this time in the World Cup final in Yokohama, and Mapimpi scored the game-breaking try.
During the previous World Cup cycle, Michael Cheika had been given even less time than Erasmus to turn round the fortunes of Australia before the 2015 World Cup. The circumstances were different, because Ewen Mckenzie had resigned after a series of off-field matters had taken their toll, but Cheika stepped up from his role with New South Wales Waratahs to take on a team that had won only 11 of 22 matches under his predecessor, with only 14 months to go until the global showpiece in England.
At short notice, his first task was to take the Wallabies on a tour to Europe that served only to underline the scale of his task. They lost three out of four Tests, overpowered by England in the scrum, prompting Cheika to sack his forwards coach, Andrew Blades, and appoint Mario Ledesma, the former Argentina hooker.
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With largely the same group of players, Ledesma would make a considerable impact. The other crucial piece that fell into place for Cheika was the return of David Pocock, the brilliant flanker, after 2½ years out of action with injury. But the game when the Wallabies really turned a corner came when Cheika picked Pocock at No 8 for the first time against New Zealand in Sydney, pairing him with a fellow breakdown specialist, Michael Hooper.
Their partnership helped Australia to a famous victory in Sydney, giving them a momentum that helped them to knock out England and play some outstanding rugby on the way to the final. The All Blacks exacted revenge at Twickenham, but Cheika had proved, as Erasmus would, that it is possible to transform the direction of a team in a limited timespan.
There are other examples of teams who have thrived at World Cups without a full four-year cycle of planning behind them. In 2011, France reached the World Cup final despite the players being in open revolt with Marc Lièvremont, their coach, who described them as “a bunch of undisciplined spoilt brats” during the tournament.
And then there is England themselves, who seemed to have lost much of the early momentum they had built up under Jones when they finished fifth in the 2018 Six Nations but went on to reach the 2019 World Cup final. “What Eddie was really excellent at through that period was being clear about where we were going, what we were doing at the time and how it fitted into the bigger picture,” Steve Borthwick, England’s forwards coach at the time, said this week. “New players came in and we changed the way we trained to push certain areas and test things in certain areas. It was all part of the bigger picture.”
Other coaching changes late in the World Cup cycle, though, have not been as successful. Gareth Jenkins became Wales coach after Mike Ruddock resigned during the 2006 Six Nations, but his side won only one match in the tournament the next year and were knocked out of the 2007 World Cup at the pool stage after a defeat by Fiji. Brian Ashton was appointed England coach less than a year before that tournament and, although his team reached the final, greater credit is often given to senior players who rallied the squad after a 36-0 defeat by South Africa in the pool stage.
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The signs are, however, that Jones will once again be given the chance to stick to his big-picture plan. But the RFU, with the patience of supporters wearing thin, knows that it is far from impossible for England’s fortunes to be turned around by someone else.
