As Eddie Jones prepares for his Six Nations bow, those who have played under the Australian and survived to tell the tale explain what England can expect

“My relationship with Eddie Jones is not perfect,” Ben Darwin says of the bruising yet inspirational influence England’s new coach had on his life and career. “There are times when I absolutely despise the man. At the same time he’s had more impact on more players in Australia than any other coach in the last 20 years.”

Darwin played under Jones for the ACT Brumbies and Australia – and worked briefly alongside him as an assistant club coach in Japan, where he remembers frightened players hiding under furniture to avoid being seen by Jones. The retired prop forward stresses that if it had not been for Jones he would have never played Test rugby. Yet the coach could reduce Darwin to tears and leave him feeling “emotionally destroyed”.

“Eddie also fired me,” Darwin says as he remembers the end of their fleeting partnership in 2012 at Suntory Sungoliath in Tokyo where Darwin worked as the forwards coach. But Darwin’s respect for Jones’s acumen made him one of the few people who placed a bet on Japan to beat South Africa in the World Cup last year. Japan won and the biggest surprise in rugby history helped Jones secure the role of England coach. Darwin also picked up a tidy sum.

Six Nations preview: the bold will be rewarded in era of new beginnings | Eddie Butler Read more

“It paid for a few drinks,” he says. “I put money on Japan to beat South Africa at 65-1 because I knew Eddie would take every single thing he learnt about South Africa to beat them [Jones was the Springboks’ assistant coach when they won the 2007 World Cup]. He also had Japan in camp for 195 days. The Japanese people were quite relieved when he was gone. And, finally, Eddie always finds a way to win – no matter what. He will find a plan.”

Jones now has to find a plan to restore England and forge a style of rugby and mental resilience that will help them win Six Nations championships and present a more formidable challenge at the 2019 World Cup in Japan. Darwin believes England are in for “a hell of a ride” – and “hell” could be the operative word for its players – but he offers a cautionary reminder.

“English rugby is not set up to be successful,” Darwin says, as he outlines the old divide between club and country. “If the RFU can’t change to a system that Eddie thinks will be successful then one of them will break – and it won’t be Eddie.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The former Australia prop Ben Darwin played under Eddie Jones during the 2003 Rugby World Cup. Photograph: Nick Laham/Getty Images

Darwin’s experiences when playing for the Brumbies and Australia were often searing. “Sometimes you think you’re going well and he’ll say: ‘You’re not even at 50% of where you should be.’ I remember a game where I scored a try and made some tackles. Eddie said: ‘All that stuff you think is impressive doesn’t impress me. You’re not doing the little things you should be doing to be a Test footballer.’

“I’ve been in tears in meetings with Eddie Jones. I’m happy to admit that because a measure of you as a person is how you respond. What generally happens with an Eddie meeting is that you come out absolutely emotionally destroyed and you think: ‘Am I going to quit?’ After a while you think: ‘I don’t want to quit. I’ll train harder and come back better.’ He wants that.

“On my first Wallaby tour I had played two Tests and at the end of the second Test, against France, Eddie pulled me into a room and said: ‘I don’t even know why I brought you over. You’ve just wasted my time. I don’t think you’re up to this.’ He was right. I had played crappily but if he was tearing strips off you it meant that he saw something in you. By the time I got to 2003 I was a far better player having been emotionally destroyed by him.

I scored a try and made some tackles. Eddie said: ‘All that stuff you think is impressive doesn’t impress me' Ben Darwin

“He wants you to go back and challenge yourself. But, certainly, he made it personal. There’s a guy called Jimmy Williams and Eddie absolutely destroyed him in front of his team-mates. Jimmy eventually played for the Wallabies and coached Australia as an assistant. There’s a huge record of guys Eddie has done that to. But some are broken by it and never come back.”

Darwin points me in the direction of Rod Kafer, his former Brumbies team-mate who also played for Australia. Explaining that Kafer was the player closest to Jones in Australia, Darwin underlines the need to hear contrasting accounts of their coach’s divisive personality. It chimes with the fact that Jones, who turned 56 on Saturday, has achieved spectacular highs and some startling low points. That tumultuous pattern emerged at the Brumbies. Jones’s disappointing debut season eventually culminated in him transforming the Brumbies and, three years later in 2001, helping them become the first Australian team to win the Super 12.

Kafer presents a warmer alternative to the Fast Eddie caricature – the fiery little coach with the whiplash tongue. “Eddie was raw on the coaching scene when he came to the Brumbies after working in Japan,” Kafer says. “I picked him up from the airport when he arrived in Canberra [in November 1997]. We were chatting in the car and I said I thought I would have one more year of rugby because I’d had enough. Eddie said: ‘Look, take your time. Don’t make any hasty decisions.’ Within another year I’d played my first Test for the Wallabies and then won the [1999] World Cup with Australia. That is the impact he had on me personally. But he also transformed the Brumbies into playing a game that was unique at the time. It’s exactly what he did with Japan – getting them to play in a very distinctive way that suited them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rod Kafer played under Eddie Jones at the Brumbies in the late 90s when he also made his breakthrough with Australia. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Darwin, who joined the Brumbies in 1998, was immediately fascinated by Jones. “I couldn’t believe the guy had played hooker at any sort of level – and Eddie had played for New South Wales. He was so tiny it astounded me. The second thing was his confidence in taking over the Brumbies. The year before they had made the Super 12 final, but I was amazed that he looked at the team and decided it wasn’t good enough. It was clear to him that we needed to change things in order to get to the next level.

“He was 100% right, but here’s the interesting thing. In 1998 the Brumbies had a bunch of injuries in an awful season. They finished 10th out of 12. The next year we came fifth, the year after that second [losing the final after topping the table] and the year after that we were first. So there was definite growth. He had the confidence to keep going – and this was a guy who didn’t have a record then. He was seen as a risk. But I’ve never met anyone who had such confidence in his plan. As a coach myself I know if you are losing you start questioning everything and doubting yourself. He may have done that internally but he never showed it.”

Eddie Jones’ way or the highway: Mike Brown hails new England ethic Read more

How did Jones change the Brumbies? “The main two areas were the way we trained and the tactics he used,” Darwin says. “He was one of the first guys to look at directing phases off the setpiece with a real plan. How many phases are we going to do if we move this way and when will we come back? Before that coaches had not thought much beyond the first phase. Someone asked him: ‘Are you playing American football?’ And he said: ‘Well, who says we’re not?’ He wanted to take the game in a whole new direction and [Stephen] Larkham and [George] Gregan really bought into that and we all followed suit. He could get the top players on board because he’s extremely intelligent with extremely high standards. Even if it’s not working tactically for Eddie it’s still developing the players.”

Kafer suggests that: “Eddie treats every player differently, but he knew the name of your wife and kids virtually from day one. Eddie took an interest and he knew how to extract that top 2% out of people which is often the difference between winning and losing.”

Even during apparently catastrophic defeats, Jones was still working out ways to win. In 2003, while coaching Australia, Jones saw the Wallabies endure successive losses to New Zealand, shipping 50 points in Sydney. But they won the match that mattered most in the World Cup semi-final in the same city that year. “I once asked Eddie how he could come up with a plan to beat the All Blacks when they had just put 50 points on us,” Darwin says. “He said: ‘I could see how to beat them even when they were hammering us. I knew we would win the next time we played them in the World Cup.’ I don’t think anyone else thinks like that. There is no doubt in my mind that Eddie has made some enormous mistakes. But I’ve never seen him make the same mistake twice.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Eddie Jones in his role as Australia coach at the 2003 World Cup. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

Darwin played his last game of rugby in that World Cup semi-final. He suffered a prolapsed disc in his neck during a collapsed scrum and narrowly avoided becoming a quadriplegic. But Darwin recovered and now runs an analytics company specialising in professional sport. Did Jones show compassion to Darwin after his career-ending injury? “He invited me to present [the jerseys] before the final, which was extremely kind. But he had a World Cup final and I was out. I’d be disappointed if he spent any more time giving me sympathy because that’s not his job. It’s not in his nature. His nature is to concentrate on the responsibility of looking after the Wallabies and move on. I don’t know what his interests are outside being a better coach. He has a very patient wife. If he has a holiday he will use it to go and meet with other coaches.”

It sounds as if Jones is like Arsène Wenger in being absorbed totally by his chosen sport. “I’ve met Arsène a few times and he seems at peace with himself,” Darwin says. “I’m not sure Eddie is at peace with himself. He might be – but his burning desire sometimes gets the better of him.”

Kafer presents a counter view. “I’ve never thought of Eddie being consumed. He loves rugby but he enjoys talking about other things. Of course Eddie has had experiences which have not worked out well but they are few and far between.”

The image of Jones as a canny rugby messiah, which became so appealing after Japan’s World Cup heroics, would have seemed ludicrous in Queensland in 2007. The Reds finished bottom of the Super 14 and lost their final game 92-3 to the Bulls in Pretoria. James Horwill, the former Wallabies captain now at Harlequins, played for the Reds. “Eddie joined us having been Wallabies coach for a long time,” Horwill says. “There was excitement because of his knowledge and experience. I was only 21, but lots of our older guys had worked with him in the national set-up.

“Unfortunately that year with Eddie saw us bottom out as an organisation. We also took that bad beating from the Bulls. That was a real low and there lots of rants from Eddie in the dressing room. It’s one of my darkest memories and I imagine it was the same for Eddie. But what’s interesting is that, even though the season felt like a disaster, Eddie brought in Will Genia and Quade Cooper out of nowhere. Will was not on the radar, but Eddie had a real eye.”

Kafer remembers that: “Quade Cooper was 17 when Eddie spotted him. There was a lot of chat about Kurtley Beale in Australia then. But Eddie told me: ‘There’s another kid who’s actually better than Kurtley: Quade Cooper.’ No one else mentioned Quade but Eddie found him.”

Darwin also takes a wider perspective when addressing the nadir of Jones’s career in Queensland. “Eddie will see what needs to be done to a team to be successful. Sometimes he will break it rather than fix it. But you have to remember that same Reds team won the Super rugby title four years later. I’m sure a lot of those kids have no love for Eddie but they still became successful”

After World Cup pain isn’t it time you really were Scotland the brave? | Eddie Butler Read more

Victor Matfield, the great Springbok lock forward, captained the Bulls when they destroyed the Reds in May 2007. He still marvels at the fact that, five months later, Jones had reinvented himself as an assistant coach to South Africa and emerged as a key figure in their World Cup triumph that October. Matfield’s strangely interlocked history with Jones is completed by him being part of the South Africa team humbled by Japan in Brighton last September.

“I remember that game against the Reds very well,” Matfield tells me. “Eddie also brought it up after Japan and he was right. These things happen in rugby. The Reds were in trouble, but we had a very good team who won the Super 14 that year.

“We only really got to know Eddie well once he joined the Springboks soon afterwards. He was a great addition and made a real difference, especially to our attacking play as he showed us how to find space. He also helped calm down Jake White [the head coach] as it was a World Cup and Eddie had reached the final four years before.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Victor Matfield celebrates South Africa’s triumphant 2007 World Cup campaign when Eddie Jones was working as an assistant to the Springboks head coach Jake White. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

“It suited Eddie to be the assistant coach – he could concentrate on rugby. After games we would sit and have a few beers with Eddie and he would talk in fascinating detail about rugby. We had some special times with him.”

Jones, however, caused untold grief to Matfield and his Springboks eight years later. “Before we played Japan we knew Eddie would be a factor as he is a very good coach. But Fourie du Preez and Schalk Burger had played in Japan and they had already told us that the Japanese were much better players than everyone gave them credit for. But it was still a shock to lose to them – even if they were very well-coached and followed Eddie’s plan perfectly.”

Luke Thompson, Matfield’s opposite number that day, was playing in his third World Cup for Japan. The New Zealand-born lock, and Japan, had not won a single match in the 2007 and 2011 tournaments. Soon after Jones took over in 2012 he dropped Thompson from the squad. “There was a definite push from Eddie to have more Japanese-born players,” Thompson says.

But Jones is a pragmatist and, realising he needed experience and power, he soon backtracked and invited Thompson to rejoin the squad. “We were really well prepared coming into 2015 and had real belief,” Thompson says. “We had trained so hard and very scientifically. But to beat South Africa and win three out of four matches was really satisfying. Against South Africa we stuck to Eddie’s gameplan really well and the longer it went on the more we believed. Basically Eddie told us the longer we stick with them the more they’ll think – and the more they think they less they’ll play.”

It sounds ridiculously simple, but Thompson prefers to concentrate on how far Jones and Japan had come from 2013 when the coach suffered a mild stroke. “That was a scary situation for the team and especially for Eddie and his family. But he bounced back incredibly well.”

Will Japan’s players miss Jones? “Tough question. They probably won’t miss the training sessions. Some players might not like him, but you don’t mind so much when you get the results. I imagine England’s players won’t like the fact that he’ll work them harder than ever. But I think he’ll be a success because he’s got Steve Borthwick as forwards coach and I really rate Steve. I loved playing for Steve and he will be superb for England.”

The pressure, however, will bear down on Jones. “He’s an extraordinary coach but I don’t know if he can fix England under the current structure,” Darwin says. “I don’t think it will work. They’ll look like they’re on the verge for three years and then fade away – just like with Stuart Lancaster. England are always on the verge. Generally, they finish second in the Six Nations or the pressure gets to them in the World Cup. They fall apart under pressure. But Eddie sees himself as the one guy who can fix England.”

Wily words from coaches belie real Six Nations strength of Wales Read more

Kafer stresses that: “Eddie understands the obstacles. He’s worked in the Premiership and he understands the challenges. But, equally, he sees a number of opportunities to show he is a truly great coach. There are only five or six coaches in world rugby who really know their craft and Eddie’s in that top bracket. Success with England would take him to an even higher level.

“I’m hoping from an Australian perspective he’s not too successful. But we had a good lunch and a great conversation about all kinds of things on the Friday before the World Cup semi-finals. I asked him: ‘If the England job came up would you think about it?’ He gave me this sly grin and said: ‘I’d love to do it.’ It didn’t surprise me when he took it and nothing will surprise me whatever happens with Eddie Jones and England.”

What’s driving Eddie? Coffee

We already know one thing about Eddie Jones – when it comes to a key meeting, he sure likes to do it over coffee:

Eddie on masterminding Japan’s stunning World Cup win over South Africa: “I had coffee with Leitchy [captain Michael Leitch] in the morning. We went down to the beach, it was sunny – and I said: “Look, mate, we’ve got nothing to lose. If you think we should have a go, have a go’.”

Eddie on England’s then captain, Chris Robshaw: “I have to sit down with Chris and chat to him. He’s got a nice cafe in Winchester. Fantastic coffee. Best coffee in England. I might grab him for a coffee down there.”

Harlequins’ director of rugby Conor O’Shea on Jones’s eventual talks with Chris Robshaw in London: “Chris is seeing Eddie for a coffee at some stage this evening.”

Eddie on recruiting Australian flanker George Smith to help with coaching: “We had a cup of coffee last week and he agreed he’s going to come down and do some work with us on the breakdown.”

Eddie on meeting Jonny Wilkinson to discuss a possible coaching role: “I had coffee with him. We would like to get him involved but he is quite a private person. We are having chats about it.”

Eddie on the shadow of Sir Clive Woodward over English rugby: “I would always speak to him and I would love to have a cup of coffee with Clive. I have not spoken to him yet but I am sure I will.”