Jones - the road to 'the greatest job'
The journey to Twickenham and what he describes as “the greatest job in rugby” has taken just shy of 20 years of coaching, with some notable stops along the way.
Speaking to World Rugby TV, the 55-year-old says the seeds of his coaching career were first sewn at Sydney-based Randwick, the club that has forged many an international career.
"I was first choice hooker for Randwick and New South Wales. But I was only 80kgs, I was too small to play international rugby, and a guy called Phil Kearns – a very good player – got picked ahead of me to play for Australia.
"When that happened, I went down to second grade in Randwick. I was always a little bit chatty, I liked to have my say, and the coaches gave me the opportunity to coach the team and that's how I started," he explained.
From the 'Galloping Greens', Jones' next move was to Japan – before he got his big break back in Australia with the Brumbies who he guided to the 2001 Super Rugby title – the first side outside of New Zealand to do so.
"When the game went professional in 1996, I got offered a job in Japan, at this really weak University [Tokai], and I was supposed to be lecturing in English and coaching. I didn't do much lecturing in English but I did do plenty of coaching!
"I had 80 players, no assistant coaches, and I used to split them up into three groups and coach them from 15.00 until 21.00. It was the best coaching experience in terms of learning how to coach and getting the best out of the team.
"From there I was lucky. A number of guys I played with at Randwick were playing for the Brumbies in the Super Rugby competition and their head coach Rod Macqueen got promoted to coach the Wallabies. They obviously put a good word in for me and I ended up getting the Brumbies head coach job. I had four years there and then coached Australia," he added.
Midway through his four-year tenure, Jones led the Wallabies to the final of the 2003 World Cup.
"It is one of the greatest experiences of your life, there is nothing like it. I always remember at the end of it we went to the lodge on the Monday night to have drinks with John Howard, the Prime Minister, and some of the boys were saying they were so sad that this is ending. To play in front of your home fans is just an unbelievable experience," he said
Jones admits the pain of losing in extra-time to England stayed with him for a good while.
"It was enormously disappointing. I probably carried that with me for four or five years when I look back. The only thing I wanted to do after that, was to win a World Cup. To get so close and not win it, it probably affected my coaching in some way.
"England certainly deserved to win. We played well but we just weren't good enough," he stated.
After the curtain was drawn on his 53-match reign in charge of Australia in 2005, Jones took up a three-year contract with the Queensland Reds but it wasn't long before he was back on the global stage again, as a technical advisor to the Springboks.
"I'd actually finished in Australia and I was on my way to start coaching Saracens. I had a gap of about two months and I got this phone call from Jake White who said, why don't I bring the family out, have a break, go on a safari and have a bit of fun for a couple of weeks?
"So I went out and did that and the two weeks turned into four months and we turned the silver medal from the 2003 World Cup into the gold medal at the 2007 World Cup. I was enormously grateful to Jake for the opportunity and the South Africa team were a great bunch of boys to work with," he said.
Jones re-joined Saracens in a consultancy capacity and stayed in England until March 2009, when he fulfilled a lifelong ambition to coach professionally in Japan.
"I am half-Japanese, my mother is Japanese, and I always wanted to go back and coach in Japan. My wife wasn't happy in England and she wanted to go back to Japan and the timing was perfect. I coached Suntory for a couple of years and had a fair bit of success and then the Japan job came up," he explained.
With Wallabies star George Smith, plus Springbok greats Fourie du Preez and Danie Rossouw on board, Suntory won the Top League title in 2012 plus two All Japan Championships.
Jones then replaced John Kirwan as Japan head coach at the end of 2012, with the brief of leading the Brave Blossoms to the 2015 World Cup. Under Jones, Japan put together a record 10-match winning run and reached the dizzy heights of ninth in the World Rankings.
They went on to win an impressive three games in their World Cup pool, including an epic victory over South Africa, which gave Jones the edge when the decision was made to appoint him England's new coach.
"It is the greatest job in world rugby. You have got a domestic competition that is very robust. You have got the talent there, you have got the biggest rugby union in the world and they haven't had success for a long period of time – you have to go back to 2003 – so it is just too good an opportunity not to take, particularly after the results in the last World Cup.
"There really is a renewed ambition and enthusiasm to do well. It is a dream job," he stated.
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