Eddie Jones is poised to continue as England’s head coach until at least 2021 even if his side fail to achieve their target at the World Cup in Japan this year. The Rugby Football Union’s new chief executive, Bill Sweeney, has also revealed Jones could still be in charge for the 2023 World Cup in France.
It represents another shift in RFU policy after Jones’s contract was extended through to 2021 by Sweeney’s predecessor, Steve Brown, in January 2018 but with a break clause should England fail to reach the semi-finals in Japan. Sweeney, who took office in May, confirmed that there would be a review if England flop in Japan but he firmly expects Jones to stay, so much so that he has handed the defence coach John Mitchell a new contract until 2021 at the Australian’s request.
Jones has hinted in the past he may leave his role regardless of how England fare in Japan but Sweeney said: “Eddie is contracted to 2021. He said very clearly to me, ‘I’m committed to staying to ‘21, I’m not looking to go anywhere else.’ You can only take somebody at their word and he said he is committed to stay till 2021.”
Asked if Jones and Mitchell may stay until the 2023 tournament, Sweeney said: “It is possible. The focus now is really on the World Cup and then making sure we get our plans in place post-World Cup. Eddie has reconfirmed his commitment through to 2021. From that perspective we’ve already started conversations around what will the coaching team be coming back from Japan. He has got a number of names in the frame.”
Brown had wanted to identify Jones’s successor before this year’s World Cup and his stated plan was to have the new head coach in place at the end of the 2019-20 season, claiming “we absolutely needed a succession process”. The new head coach was supposed to lead a developmental England side on the 2020 summer tour of Japan with Jones taking a back seat. In effect it was a way of tying Jones down when his stock was at its highest – he had just been named coach of the year – before freeing him up to coach the British & Irish Lions.
Brown lasted just over a year, however, with Sweeney, who has been brought in to stem the union’s financial losses, in effect ripping up that plan, claiming it would have been a distraction to make plans before this year’s World Cup, despite France, Ireland, Wales and Italy doing so. “I think any other speculation prior to that would be really disruptive to the situation.”
This is not the first time the RFU’s succession plan has changed. When Jones was appointed by Ian Ritchie at the end of 2015, he said that “a fundamental part of my job” was to groom one of his assistants to take over. Paul Gustard has left however, and Steve Borthwick – though a valued RFU employee – is not head coach material.
That left Brown eager to extend Jones’s contract, with the obvious caveat of a break clause, while Nigel Melville, who filled in on a temporary basis until Sweeney’s arrival, had claimed the union was drawing up two lists of candidates to take the job either immediately after the World Cup, or in 2021, depending on England’s performance in Japan.