Jones starts mind games

EDDIE JONES, the Australian coach, isn’t usually one to lavish compliments on his opponents, so you can only suspect he was playing mind games yesterday when lauding the Irish team in the build-up to Saturday’s World Cup clash at the Telstra Stadium.

In announcing a side very much on expected lines, Jones took the opportunity to point out how dangerous are Irish backs like Brian O’Driscoll and Denis Hickie and how they have one of the finest front-rows in the game in John Hayes, Keith Wood and either Reggie Corrigan or Marcus Horan.

Jones lacks the eloquence of an Eddie O’Sullivan or even a Clive Woodward and you suspect he wishes that press conferences weren’t an integral part of the World Cup. He allowed flanker Phil Waugh to attend yesterday’s get-together but had clearly warned him against rising to any question that might be asked about Irish flanker Keith Gleeson, who, of course, grew up in Australia and so well-known to the Aussie players.

“Keith’s obviously a very good player and has been playing very well at international level, but my focus is to do my job for Australia and the team,” said Waugh, who was later heard to turn to Aussie PR guru Djuro Sen and inquire: “Did I do okay?”

Given how little of any consequence he had to contribute, you guess Phil will escape a rap on the knuckles from the headmaster. As for Jones himself, he was pretty non-committal when the rival teams performances against Argentina were raised.

“It’s very hard to draw formlines through different games,” he declared. “We probably caught Argentina on an off-night, I don’t think they played with their usual intensity, whereas the game on Sunday in Adelaide was a pretty fierce contest, high quality in terms of the physical and forward contest so I wouldn’t like to draw any formlines between those two games.”

I raised with Jones the point that Ireland are once again a place above Australia in the world rankings and wondered if that would spur them on to a big performance on Saturday. “We don’t take too much notice of those IRB rankings, the only rankings that count are the 80 minutes you play on Saturday,” was as far as he would go even, though he has been quite vociferous on the subject over the past few weeks and has passed a few snide remarks about Ireland.

Clearly, as the match day draws ever closer, Jones is clearly intent on avoiding saying anything that could be used as a motivational tool by Eddie O’Sullivan.

A rare smile broke out when it was pointed out to Jones that O’Sullivan was placing greater importance on the quarter-final game and was considering resting some players for Saturday.

“He’s a cagey character, isn’t he,” Jones quipped. “The Irish always have smiling eyes, haven’t they, and I think they’re smiling at the moment. But we understand their intention on Saturday is to play as physically and aggressively as Ireland normally do. You only have to go back to the pool game in ’99 and that’s what we are expecting on Saturday. Full stop.” Asked if he was referring directly to the fierce punch-up between Toutai Kefu and Trevor Brennan which subsequently earned the Irishman a suspension, Jones said: “Yeah, but there were a couple of other incidents as well. It was a pretty spiteful game.”

Quick as a flash, he quickly amended that to: “We’re not saying Saturday’s game will be spiteful, what we’re saying is that it will be physically aggressive. I’ve never seen an Ireland side not play with 100% passion and 100% aggression. And any side that’s won 18 of its last 20 games has more than just that to offer. They’re an enormously intelligent side.

“They play very much to their strengths. They play to their key players and they’ve worked out a game plan that suits their resources. And they’re an extremely well-coached side.”

And that was only the beginning of the Irish “love-in” by Jones. He wasn’t for underestimating the threat posed by Brian O’Driscoll in spite of his moderate form of the past few months. Like any good Aussie, Jones used a cricketing analogy to reflect his thoughts: “O’Driscoll is like an out of form batsman. He only has to hit one in the middle and he’ll be in form straightaway.

“He’s a great danger and we’ve been impressed by Hickie on the left wing, he gets involved in general play very well. Whoever they pick at five-eight (out-half), whether it’s O’Gara or Humphreys, has one of the best kicking games in the world. Having Hayes back in the front-row has made an enormous difference. He’s a very experienced tight head. Obviously, Corrigan and Horan are different types of loose heads and Wood’s a world-class hooker, so their scrum is smart, very much like the way they play the game. They’ve got a good set of tactics. They may regard the Aussie pack as a weakness in our make-up.

“They probably do. They certainly finished on top of us in the forwards in the wet at Lansdowne Road and came out here in their spring and were probably using that as a development for the World Cup, so you can discount that result.

“The stats show clearly that Ireland do well when their forwards do well. I expect they will target the Australian forwards and we’re happy to take up the challenge“.

If only we were that good!