Eddie Jones

Eddie Jones will most likely not be coming back to Cape Town to assist the DHL Stormers in their pre-season preparation work, but he will be in Los Angelos this week.

Newly appointed England coach Jones will be addressing a World Rugby workshop on the success of the Japan team at the Rugby World Cup, who won 3 games despite failing to make the play-offs under his guidance.

Jones was unveiled as the new DHL Stormers coach earlier this month, before being made an offer he could not refuse by the English RFU which saw him leave Cape Town after just 2 weeks.

Stormers director of rugby, Gert Smal, claimed that Jones would return to Cape Town in December to assist with the planning for next season, explaining that the experienced coach felt bad for the way things had transpired with the Stormers.

“Eddie will come in early December and we will sit down and do the pre-season phase and the planning with him up until we play the Bulls in our 1st game.

“We don’t pay him anything, it was purely from his side, he feels bad and he really wants to see that we go ahead,” Smal said at a press conference at Newlands on Friday.

However, Jones poured cold water on that idea on his arrival in England, and explained that he will be in Los Angelos this week before heading over to Japan to fetch his wife, after which he will report for duty at Twickenham on 1 December.

Representatives from each of the 10 tier 2 unions will come together at a World Rugby workshop in Los Angelos designed to maximise the gains made from the Rugby World Cup, including an address from Jones.

Mark Egan, World Rugby’s Head of Competitions and Performance, explained exactly what the workshop in Los Angelos would seek to achieve.

“The workshop is in effect a Rugby World Cup debrief. Over the course of the 2 days we’ll be pouring over a myriad of statistics to see which teams have improved their performance from tournament to tournament in key areas of the game, while also examining what has and hasn’t worked from a player release, scheduling and a team preparation and assembly time point of view.

“Everyone will be working towards the same goal – making tier 2 nations even more competitive so that the gap between themselves and the established elite continues to narrow. I’m sure the head coaches and high performance managers in attendance will be fascinated to hear Eddie’s views on how the gains made at Rugby World Cup 2015 can be maximised and the secrets behind the Brave Blossoms’ success.

“Staff at the tier 2 nations have told me personally that Japan’s win gave them the confidence and belief that anything was possible and as a result they went out to play a brand of attacking rugby rather than just dig deep in the hope of keeping the score down, which had arguably been the case in the past.

“Our hope was to have 1 tier 2 nation qualifying for the knockout stages, and with 3 wins from 4, Japan would have achieved that goal in any other tournament. Undeterred, the bar remains high – higher in fact, as our stretch target for 2019 is to have 2 tier 2 quarterfinalists and more shock results along the way. After all, the unpredictability of outcome is what draws people in and makes for great sporting theatre,” he added.

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