Eddie Jones, Rassie Erasmus and the golden age of rugby coaching dramas

Eddie Jones shares a moment with Rassie Erasmus. Photo / Getty Images

Recent coaching dramas surrounding Eddie Jones underscore the growing fascination with rugby coaches.

Once upon a time, fans of off-field sporting drama had to rely on European football to get their fix of intrigue and idiocy.

In the mid-2000s – the English Premier League’s halcyon days of banter – managers like Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson had genuine antipathy for one another and enough zinging one-liners to keep attention firmly on the sidelines. Mourinho was dismissive of the wine Ferguson served at post-match drinks; the contrast between the Scotsman’s dockyard demeanour and Wenger’s dry, professorial posture was stark.

Sports fans love this stuff. Major sport lives and breathes on off-field dramas.

For fans of English south-coast super-club Portsmouth, there was as much interest in where manager Harry Redknapp was likely to go – and what he would say in post-match interviews while never looking the interviewer in the eye – as there was in the wheeling and dealing that brought big-name players to Fratton Park.

Rugby coaches were never such fun. Even the most verbose would seldom have anything dismissive to say about their opposite numbers.

Perhaps it’s because so many of the great rugby coaches in the modern game are New Zealanders – a generation of non-boat-rocking rugby gaffers. The innovations Sir Graham Henry brought to the game – his pod systems pretty much set the framework for how the sport is played today – left a greater legacy than his witticisms.

Traditionally, the best the public could hope for regarding banter from New Zealand rugby coaches would be a couple of utterances bemoaning the state of journalism.

Thankfully, times have changed. Eddie Jones – former coach of the Wallabies, Japan, England, Wallabies again and then back to Japan – pretty much brings a big-top circus to every press conference. His countryman Michael Cheika is firing shots from Buenos Aires where he runs Los Pumas; the king of them all, South Africa’s brilliant Rassie Erasmus, will say pretty much anything to build interest or deflect attention from his team and their crafty plans.

If there were more Australians (rather than Kiwis) coaching international rugby teams, the standard of banter would soar, even as the standard of footy declined.

Into this lively mob charges our own Scott Robertson. The early signs are positive – the smile, the breakdancing, the campaign themes. It’s to be hoped Razor’s personality is accelerated on the international stage.

Winston Aldworth is NZME’s Head of Sport and has been a journalist since 1999.