‘Out of touch, out of luck, out of time’ Eddie Jones slammed by world media after Wallabies low

Rugby reporters around the world have hit out at Eddie Jones with the Wallabies on the brink of a humiliating Rugby World Cup exit.

The record 40-6 loss to Wales in Lyon on Monday was the two-time World Cup winners’ worst in the tournament history and almost certainly consigns them to a first-ever exit after the group stages.

Despite being dropped for the World Cup, former Wallabies captain Michael Hooper urged people “not to have a crack at Eddie’’, but Australian and European rugby critics haven’t held back.

Oliver Brown, a columnist for the London-based Daily Telegraph, slammed Jones as “out of touch, out of luck, out of time’’ and said it would be “unconscionable’’ to allow him to carry on.

“Eddie Jones has been a roguish constant in test rugby for over 20 years, turning himself into a one-man vaudeville act with his lethal tongue and rapier wit. Except nobody is laughing any longer, least of all Australia.

“The 63-year-old sweet-talked his way back into the Wallabies job on the pretext that his country needed his Solomonic wisdom to succeed. Eight months later, he has guided with a first World Cup pool-stage exit in their history on the cards. Belatedly, his compatriots think they have been duped by someone who has talked a far better game than he has delivered.

Laurent Cipriani/AP

Australia’s head coach Eddie Jones looks pensive before the Wallabies’ World Cup loss to Wales.

“Forget all the flannel that he could yet turn Australia into world-beaters in 2027. In eight test matches he has contrived only to beat Georgia, with that miserable sequence reaching its most vivid expression with this capitulation to a Wales side who could scarcely believe the flimsy resistance. “We’ll beat Wales,” he had declared, with an impish smile. Who was he kidding? In taking this £400,000-a-year job straight after his sacking by the Rugby Football Union, this diminutive dictator has been trading on nothing more than blind faith.”

Brown said Jones’ record should be “grounds for Hamish McLennan, chairman of Rugby Australia, to dismiss him, however seduced he might have been by Jones’ cult of personality”.

“But now it is reported that Jones has been seeking alternative employment with Japan behind the scenes – a story he was furious to be asked about, but did not deny – he should be dispatched on the first flight to Tokyo without delay.”

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tom Decent wrote: “The Eddie Jones experiment can officially be declared a disaster after the Wallabies all but crashed out of the World Cup in record-breaking fashion”.

He said the Wallabies were “humiliated and outclassed’’ by Wales, who “continued their perfect record’’ with their third win to clinch a quarterfinal place.

Decent homed in on Jones’ coaching nadir occurring “just hours after [the Sydney Morning Herald] revealed he’d had a job interview with Japan last month.

Jones has refused to discuss the claim and Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh is still backing him, but Sonny Bill Williams felt if any talks had been held it could have been unsettling for players.

“From a player’s point of view, I’m not following a guy that’s sitting having a meeting with another national team, potentially looking for another job days before you are hopping on the plane [to the World Cup],” Jones, a Stan Sport commentator, said.

Christophe Ena/AP

Eddie Jones holds a ball before the game against Wales. Now he’s left carrying the can.

McLennan’s own role in recruiting Jones is also likely to come under scrutiny.

Former England international Andy Goode wrote on social media: “Whoever sacked Dave Rennie and employed Eddie Jones at the Wallabies needs to walk and take Eddie with him!”

Former England and British and Irish Lions flyhalf Stuart Barnes said “Lyon represented a new low’’ for Australia, “a country where rugby union has long played back-up to rugby league and Aussie rules football”.

“Eddie Jones’s team came into the test with six losses in seven matches, bruised egos and battered confidence, not to mention rumours of the head coach’s clandestine negotiations with Japan. Australia were at an all-time World Cup low before kick-off. They tumbled into the world of the abject.”

Gerard O’Meagher, writing in The Guardian, said the loss to his “old sparring partner Warren Gatland’’ would “hammer home the extent of it’’ and “only deepen the wounds’’ for Jones.

“By the end of this humiliation, the Wallabies had long since thrown in the towel, Wales playing out a glorified training session.

“The only previous time Jones has failed to make it out of the pool stage at a World Cup was in 2015, when he was Japan’s head coach. It was a tournament that changed the course of his career, and you wonder if history will repeat itself eight years on.”