My Life and Rugby by Eddie Jones

Author:Eddie Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

I obviously understood the first two, but I didn’t have a clue about the third point. It was explained that, before the Second World War, 75 per cent of Japanese people grew rice for a living. They lived in rural villages where a dominant boss drove them hard as they had a quota of rice to grow. Anyone who rebelled or upset the production line would be kicked off the farm or out of the village and left to fend for themselves. So everyone toed the line and did what they were told. My development coaches told me that Japanese people, even in a society transformed by technology, had not shaken their farmer’s mentality. They lived to please their boss and showed little to no instinct for leadership.

I didn’t buy it. The Japanese had demonstrated extraordinary leadership in transforming their economy into a powerhouse in the wake of the devastation of two atomic bombs. So we needed to find and develop the essence of this leadership in our own squad. Clearly we also needed to train much harder to get fitter and stronger and to improve our rugby skills.

My backup staff consisted of just two Australians – Scott Wisemantel and John Pryor. I looked after the scrum, the lineout, general attack and general defence. Wisey focused on the backs’ lines of attack. JP looked after our strength and conditioning. It was a complex task for John because if you run harder and longer you strip away muscle. But we needed to put on muscle – especially among our forwards. John is brilliant and he studied hard. He used a lot of strength-and-conditioning ideas pioneered by Frans Bosch, a Dutch biomechanist, who talks about differential systems which help the body organize itself so muscle mass can be added at the same time that endurance and explosive fitness are intensified.

The hardest task was to break the farmer’s mentality. Time and again we created opportunities for the players to lead. Once the referee’s whistle blew, they couldn’t rely on me, Wisey and JP. They had to find leaders amongst themselves. So I put them in unusual situations.

We would set up secret cameras in a room, call a meeting and not turn up. From a distance we would watch how they reacted. In another little trick we would tell them to wait at a certain spot so that they could be picked up by the team bus. I would make sure that the team bus never left the garage. It was interesting to watch them milling around, not knowing what to do. Eventually one or two of the more resourceful guys took charge. They showed the leadership we needed.

I started to spread my plans for the team through these emerging leaders. Just as at Suntory, the Japanese players had to own the plans. The goal was to lift Japan into the top ten of world rugby. At the time, Japan was ranked 16th. Rugby tradition said that the Six Nations and the Tri Nations occupy nine of those places.

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