The three words that unleashed Eddie Jones … and put Hamish McLennan in firing line

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If Hamish McLennan could take three words back, they’d probably be the ones he uttered about 40 minutes into Eddie Jones’ welcome home press conference at Matraville High in January.

Asked whether he’d increased picks of overseas-based players, Jones grinned and said “they’re all available” but admitted they hadn’t spoken about it.

Sitting to Jones’ right, McLennan added: “Whatever he wants.”

It was a gag, but it still jarred. Here was the Rugby Australia chairman giving the Wallabies coach a pretty clear picture he could run his own show, and there’d be a rubber stamp waiting at head office.

Fast-forward nine months and the Eddie Jones experiment is in smoking ruins, with the Wallabies all but out of the World Cup and the game at a historically low ebb in Australia.

One year into a five-year contract, Jones’ future as Wallabies coach appears untenable, particularly after this masthead revealed he’d been talking to Japan about taking over as coach. Polls, pundits and public discourse all tell the same tale: Jones must go.

But right alongside Jones in the firing line is McLennan, with vast numbers of angry Australian fans taking to social media, group chats and radio talkback to call for the chairman to pack his bags as well.

The reason is simple: it was McLennan’s “captain’s call” to recruit Jones, and so he’s on the hook for all the destruction that has followed.

McLennan had been talking to Jones about a role for the 2024-2027 World Cup cycle but when England sacked him in December – and with a bee still buzzing in his bonnet from the Wallabies’ defeat to Italy a month earlier – the RA chair swooped. With the board’s approval, Dave Rennie was sacked with a year left on his contract.

There is a valid debate about whether Rennie deserved to be sacked, and it has been accentuated by the Wallabies’ pathetic World Cup results. But, while harsh on Rennie, McLennan’s move to bring back Jones – who had taken England to the 2019 World Cup final – had defendable logic.

Hamish McLennan (left) and Andy Marinos (right) listen to Eddie Jones talking at Matraville High.Credit: Getty

As the months progressed, though, logic started going out the window and what began as a blizzard of welcome publicity and hope turned into an increasingly erratic and bizarre coaching show from Jones, who had turfed all of Rennie’s assistants and surrounded himself with an eclectic coaching staff, many with jumbled roles.

Then, after slow but visible progress in a winless Rugby Championship, Jones lurched to the nuclear option and picked a ridiculously inexperienced World Cup squad. It was time for a new start, Jones said, ignoring the dangerous – and now realised – short-term risks to the game’s health in Australia.

With Australian rugby now in a crumpled heap, the businessman in McLennan acknowledges he is also accountable for Jones’ results, and though he wants to stay on as chair, understands he may not. He told this masthead he would “live with that” if the Rugby Australia board decide to make a change in the chairman role, as part of the inevitable reset needed to put the stink of the 2023 World Cup in the past.

Given this is the same board that approved Jones’ hiring, and presumably agreed to him appointing six different captains (as per the RA constitution), McLennan is probably on safe ground. But Australian rugby fans are extremely restless and Jones’ departure may not sate their rage.

Wallabies players after the loss in Lyon.Credit: AP

McLennan’s misstep wasn’t the hiring of Jones. That’s a move others would have made as well.

The misstep was a lack of due diligence about Jones’ notoriously impulsive instincts, and then an alarming lack of oversight and control as Jones steered the good ship Wallaby towards an exposed reef.

At some point, should McLennan or other board types with rugby nous not have pulled Jones up and asked: “One five-eighth and the most inexperienced Wallabies World Cup squad ever … what are you thinking?”

But having been so excited to have Eddie back, the default position at Rugby Australia – after any weird Jones incident, podcast quote or selection call – appears to have been shrugged shoulders and a “that’s just Eddie being Eddie”.

Little wonder Jones felt the freedom to have a job interview with Japan on the eve of the World Cup.

To his credit, McLennan fronted up for interviews on Monday after the Wallabies’ loss and admitted he was accountable for all the decisions that had been made. Whether that will end with McLennan staying or going remains to be seen.

Watch all the action from the Rugby World Cup 2023 on the Home of Rugby, Stan Sport. Every match streaming ad-free, live and in 4K UHD with replays, mini matches and highlights available on demand.

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