Durban - Rassie Erasmus was 100 percent accurate on Tuesday when he said that with Eddie Jones, “You just never know what you are going to get.”
SA Rugby director Erasmus was speaking at a press conference in Pretoria ahead of next week’s Rugby Championship match between the Springboks and Jones’ Wallabies.
Jones needs no introduction to Loftus. It was the scene of his most humiliating experience in rugby — the Bulls annihilated his Queensland Reds 92-3 in a Super 14 match in 2007.
On the other side of the coin, Jones’ finest moment in his career involved a South African team, the Springboks. At the Brighton soccer stadium in 2015, Jones engineered the biggest upset in World Cup history when his Japanese Brave Blossoms shocked the Boks 34-32.
That was how Jones got the England job he had until a few months ago. He was able to write his own cheque after England had crashed out of their tournament in the early stages.
And Rassie has not forgotten that Jones was Jake White’s last-minute coaching trump card at the 2007 World Cup.
“I was part of the Bok group before I moved to the Stormers, and Eddie came in,” Erasmus smiled. “He knows South Africans very well and he’s worked so widely around the world to broaden his coaching vision.”
Jones has now gone full circle. He is back where he started, at the Wallabies, after a 17-year absence, and that makes him all the more dangerous, according to Erasmus.
“I always feel that a South African working with South Africans will get the best out of South Africans and I think an Australian working with Australians will get the best out of them,” Erasmus said.
“It took Jacques (Nienaber) and me a while to get used to how things worked at Munster, how they operated and what was important and what wasn't.
“Eddie knows the Aussie setup. He has been there. The interesting thing would be as to where his assistants worked because they'll bring in different flavours to the party."
Erasmus says there is already evidence at the Wallabies that Jones is thinking out of the box ahead of the World Cup.
“Some of those centres and wingers that they have are bigger than flankers,” he grinned. “Eddie always plays one or two mind games because he's the kind of guy who can do stuff like that.
"I think he's got some rugby league guys in as well and he's got a massive coaching staff, but because of his experience, he can get people aligned in a short space of time. He is the kind of guy who is not afraid of doing things like that.
“It’ll be one of Eddie's challenges that we have to deal with.”
@MikeGreenaway67