Eddie Jones
Japan coach Eddie Jones has dismissed speculation that he has penned a deal with the DHL Stormers but said he was in talks with the Cape side.
Jones, like any professional in the sporting world, is weighing up his options before his contract comes to an end in Japan.
The Australian has a contract with the ‘Brave Blossoms’ until the end of 2015 but he was thought keen to remain in Japan, which will host the 2019 World Cup, to coach the national side as well as the new Super Rugby expansion team.
However, reports from Cape Town on Monday said that the 55-year-old had already put pen-to-paper on a 2-year deal worth R 5 000 000.00 ($ 385 563.00) per year with the Stormers.
There was also speculation that Jones could retain his role with the Japan national side despite being based in South Africa.
The former Springbok assistant coach told Japan’s Kyodo News on Tuesday he was simply exploring his options.
“I am chatting with the Stormers but that’s the extent of it,” he said.
“I am off contract in 2015 and I’m looking at my options.
“Players and coaches sign contracts and do everything they can until the contract comes to an end. But you need to look elsewhere when your contract is coming to an end. That’s professional rugby.”
Jones, who has never held a top coaching position in South Africa, said he was always drawn to the appeal of doing something different.
“That’s why I came to Japan after coaching in England,” he said.
“No Australian has done anything in Japan. I like new challenges and that’s why I am chatting with them.”
Former Stormers coach Allister Coetzee, has moved to Japan to take over Top League side the Steelers and the Cape Town outfit have been in the market for a new coach.
rugby365
30 @ NZINCHINA:
That just does not wash, with the VOLUME of rugby players we have in SA!
What does wash however, is the fact that our Rugby Administrators are behind the times and our coaches are not brought through correctly, leading to the simple fact that it appears as if our backs do not know what to do with the ball.
If coaches continue to play the wrong game approach, with players who have been conditioned to the same old stoid approach, then we won’t catch up either.
So, there needs to be a massive mind shift to unearth these exciting backline players and to bring them right through.
To say we don’t have the quality / depth in the backs is a very, very short-sighted and simplistic view of the situation and is simply not true.
@ grootblousmile:
Right now you don’t have that much quality or depth in the Bokke set up, Fij/Samoa produce better outside backs than SA with very little coaching or funding, a big part is natural flair/ ball handing skills which just doesn’t come naturally to your boys, no amount of coaching is going to change that.
@ NZINCHINA:
Fiji and New Zealand backs are huge, part of our fight is being lost because of provincialism mud slinging and supposed obsession with size, so we often shift small players to the wing who simply cant compete with the Saveas, Nadolo’s and Noholo’s of the world.
So we are simply forcing the small guys to the wing because at least they are fast with little consideration to other factors, to compensate for this our other inside backs and forwards take the ball up more often, while that responsibility can easily be shared in NZ between the entire backline which creates more offloading opportunities as well.
Do we have the players for this at school level? Definitely. AS GB said, we also need a mindshift to move with the times, flair and handling can be coached, especially when a player has natural hand eye coordination, and when you look at the vast amount of sports South Africans play, the skills are definitely there naturally… just needs guidance.
32 @ NZINCHINA:
Nonsense!
@ MacroPolo:
@ 33
The athletic prowess of the Samoans, Fijians, Tongans and Maoris is undeniable…that is the main reason why a tiny Island with few resources like Samoa for example can be such a power and mix it with the big boys. I think they are on average more natural athletic than South Africans or the English for example and in a speed and collision sport like rugby or NFL football it is obviously a major asset. NZ obviously benefits enormously from it as they can draw on ethnic Islanders who have moved or were borne in New Zealand.
RE post 32 it should read “as naturally”
@ grootblousmile:
😛 😛
The problem SA has is that we possess quantity over quality.
It’s one thing bragging about how many players we have, but the proof is in the pudding.
For all our resources and player numbers we are unable to field even more than two really competitive sides in the SR.
We have all these CC provinces, but the standard of the players don’t instill confidence.
Our juniors are competitive, but definitely aren’t as dominant as we like to believe given the amount of players we have.
I would rather we have 30 decent p,ayers who can dominate the RC and the WC than to have 30 000 players on someone’s books somewhere who can’t win any trophies except the RC Wooden Spoon
@ nortie:
Yep big quantities and yet the Currie Cup must be the only competition in the world with match day squads of 22 players these days instead of 23, with pretty much the only rotation non injury enforced coming from the Lions.
robzim wrote:
Yep, but I can think of quite a few athletic loose forwards in our country.
That is also where they get thinned out at school and Varsity level, because we traditionally select strong athletic players at 7 or 8 and very rarely make use of them on the wing for example, only WP attempted to rectify this by moving Nic Koster I think? very short lived experiment though.
… as it should happen earlier.
The Bulls also took a athletic wing and made him an 8th man instead.
nortie wrote:
Also everyone is talking about this from a school level where we are more competitive and what happens from there and NOT the RC.
The point I am making, is that SA has the player pool, but we groom them incorrectly, we mould them incorrectly and we do not add as much value in the handling and skills department as we should… and like Macro suggests, we put all the smaller fast chaps out on the wing and the fast and athletic big chaps are sent straight to the forwards.
Our method basically comes down to stunting natural ability… oh yes it is there in abundance… yet we do not utilize it.
That’s why I said, we need a total mind shift, from junior school ranks right up to our national side… all the way through.
If the Lions could have this total mind shift, and I doubt anyone would contest that they did not have one in both Super Rugby and the Currie Cup, then it stands to reason that the rest could and should also do with a mind shift.
The signs are there that the Free State Cheetahs are doing so under Franco Smith, that Nollis Marais is trying to do the same with the Blue Bulls and that John Dobson is getting there with the WP okes. I see it at the Steval Pumas and at the Leopards… but I do not see it at the Sharks yet and neither do I see it at the EP Kings.
How exciting has the Varsity Cup been… and there’s oodles of exciting and innovative talent oozing through from Varsity Cup!
It’ll take a few years though to impliment all of this and bring this type of game through, to expect it to happen overnight is a farse.
We need to change things right from the way we approach positional selection, to brand new training methods and methodologies, to identifying player talent and to shifting the emphasis from barging over players into running into space and looking for off-loads in tackles.
Let’s not kid ourselves, it is a mother-trucker of a nation wide process and total revision of what has been before, to this newly evolved scenario.
This whole process will require a massive drive and a whole new positive attitude and mindset!
Does it need to be done… hell YES!
41 @ MacroPolo:
“Also everyone is talking about this from a school level where we are more competitive and what happens from there and NOT the RC.”
Why from a school level only? SA rugby is SA rugby.
Anyway, what gives us the impression that our school boy rugby is so good? Just a month ago WP won 95-0 in the Craven Week final, so how good can our schoolboys be if the losing finalist gets klapped by almost 100 points?
Also, if the juniors were so strong why don’t we dominate the Junior WC every year?
Just because many kids play rugby at school doesn’t mean we are good at rugby.
I would venture to guess that there are more kids playing soccer at school level, be it organized, or informal, yet look how kak our national soccer team is.
Our rugby is at least better than our soccer, but we are no world beaters or trend setters, and merely having copious amounts of players doesn’t mean much if not even one SA player currently will even be selected for the AB side , let alone a World XV
@ nortie:
No one ever said our juniors dominate, but they are very competitive.
Which leads to another question, why our domestic rugby is in decline provincially as well as internationally, a big factor is of course a massive group of players leaving, but there has to be other elements.
So there has to be a ROOT to the problem, no use scolding the branches.
Also one result and craven week that is an extreme outlier surely can not be considered the bench mark.
@ MacroPolo:
The biggest problem here is the myth that the Bokke dominated world rugby before professional rugby, in fact the Bokke pre 92′ only won 68% of their tests matches losing nearly every third test they played, the Ab’s won over 70% during the same period, this created the myth that Bokke rugby was way out in front when clearly it wasn’t.
@ NZINCHINA:
Yep, no denying that, the pre 92 era teams and players gets more hyped every day.
@ MacroPolo:
The bottom line is simply that many Saffas believe we are a better rugby nation than we really are.
Just because we have large numbers of registered players doesn’t mean success on the field.
Australia hardly have rugby union at schoolboy level, only the so called elite schools play union, have Aussie rules, League and cricket rated above union, yet with so little players, they are are equal, if not better than us.
NZ probably have a population that is less than our rugby players alone, we are not even on the same page as them.
Ireland is ranked nr 2 in the world, do they have more players than us?
I’m saying that this fallacy that we have so many players therefor we are so good is bull, we are mediocre with purple patches in between.
For a country to be ranked 5th and coming off a wooden spoon in the RC, not having won a junior WC in the last 3 years, not even threatening a SR title between our top 5 franchises, we really have buggerall to shout about.
As Divvy rightly pointed out, our rugby is in the gutters
@ nortie:
Well there is no denying that we usually think we are better than we really are and that leads to complacency. We had a great year in 2009 then proceeded to lose 8 out of the next 10 games in the tri nations.
And over the last decade or what we have see sawed between 1(very shorty) and fifth.
Im not saying that we should dominate everyone. But at the very least we should be competitive
@ MacroPolo:
Under Kitch we were world champions, but not the best team in the world.
We had a good win in the final, but NZ were the superior team, as 1996 showed.
Under Mallett we were for quite a long period the best in the world, no doubt, 17 test wins in a row isn’t something just any team can accomplish.
Under Jake we were for periods the best in the world, and under Divvie as well, to beat the AB’s at home and away isn’t easy.
Under Strauli, Viljoen, Du Plessis and Meyer we were and are a joke, pox a win here and there against lesser opponents and rave about how we almost beat the AB’s.
And it’s not just the coaches who are out of their depth, our players are also not as good as we would like to believe.
Currently not one Bok, whether HM’s first choice players or any other not in his group, will make a world XV side
@ nortie:
Under pdivvy and jake we also had stages of being 4 or 5th in the world.
@ MacroPolo:
Yes, but under both of them we had periods where we were the best in the world as well.
Both those coaches have silverware and trophies, as does Mallet and Christie.
Except for those 4 the rest of the Bok coaches were kak and so were their teams
nortie wrote:
No one is saying our players will fill up a world team (lexit world xv)… Your making points we are all aware of…
That however is not the trend. We have regularly had players who are the best in the world in their positions or at least the best in superrugby.
The question is what happened and how do we rectify it?
No to shout “We are kak, i give up!”
@ nortie:
Lol mr straw man… A discussion about our pool of players becomes another soap box for a meyer rant.
@ nortie:
To be fair you did include the other coaches thatcouldnt keel us even second in the world.
MacroPolo wrote:
Not about Meyer only, he is currently one of the problems, but it’s not unique to him, all the other coaches were just as hyped up, patriotic…but ultimately just as inept
53 @ MacroPolo:
It’s not about giving up, it’s about admitting that sometimes we are not the team we long to be, and for die hard supporters it’s difficult to swallow.
We are not a country that is sliding into mediocracy, we are already a country that embraces it, not just in sport.
Sport, especially rugby and cricket, has always been the one constant in many of our lives, but maybe it’s time to accept that we are more also rans than champions.
We have slid so far that a coach and team that managed the lofty position of nr 8 on the SR log is hailed as a new beginning.
Our national team is not far behind, one win in their last 5 tests, including a home loss to Argentina, yet we cling to “how close we came to beating NZ and Aus” as if to prove we are not entirely crap.
We will be very pleased if we progress to the semi final of the WC, and will see that as a successful campaign.
@ nortie:
Fair points nortie
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