Ireland the benchmark as Felix Jones builds England's blitz 

Felix Jones, the former Munster and Ireland full-back, coaches England's defence against his homeland today.

BENCHMARK: England defence coach Felix Jones believes Ireland are the benchmark as he builds England. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

It’s nothing new, certainly not in Test rugby, for a coach to be plotting the downfall of the country of their birth. It is a topic that continues to fascinate, even if it appears tiresome to the people at the heart of the issue and the questions have been asked more than once, in both the Irish and English camps, ahead of this evening’s Guinness Six Nations clash in south-west London.

“I get asked this every time I go back and I’ve been back quite a bit now,” Ireland’s head coach Andy Farrell said on Thursday as he was asked to review once more his English birth and Irish allegiances, before steering his answer back to something more relevant to him and his objectives.

“It’s no different to any other game. We, and certainly I, concentrate on the week ahead and this game is no more important than the first game in Marseille or no more important than the Italy game or the Wales game at home. It’s another chance for us to go out there and show the best of ourselves, albeit a tough old task. Everyone knows it’s a tough place to go and get a victory. But that’s the challenge in front of us every week.” 

Over at Twickenham yesterday Felix Jones, the former Munster and Ireland full-back, had perhaps even less reason to engage given the odds stacked against England today and the criticism flying from the home media following a damaging Calcutta Cup defeat to Scotland last time around a fortnight ago.

“It’s not a deal, it’s been done before, I’ve coached against Ireland twice before,” Jones flat-batted. “I coached against Ireland (first) with South Africa, in November 2022.

“Just the exact same as now, you treat it professionally. That game was in the Aviva but there’s no difference really.

“I think when you go into coaching you have to accept that there’s only so much time you’ll be with certain teams before you move on.

“There’s plenty of ex-English coaching staff members on the Irish team as well. It’s just the way it is.” 

The England defence coach is only weeks into his job having moved closer to his Seapoint, Dublin home after more than four years in the South Africa coaching set-up. Jones is implementing the blitz defence that proved so successful for the Springboks in successive World Cup campaigns but it is still early days, even by his old boss Jaques Nienaber’s assertion on arrival as Leinster’s senior coach that it takes 14 weeks to bed in a new defensive system.

“I probably don’t have an exact timeframe,” he said yesterday of his own plans for England’s new systems to take effective shape. “I’ve heard Jacques say that a few times, and I think I’ve also heard him say he probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.” 

Having labelled Ireland’s offensive gameplan as the “complete attack”, Jones accepted that Farrell’s team were setting the standards to which other teams should aspire.

“Ireland are one of the teams setting the benchmark at the moment so there will be a lot of teams trying to emulate that.

“The Irish system is, having come through that system myself as a player and a coach, I have an understanding of how fine-tuned it is, how impressive it is and some of the amazing work that’s been done there. And the amazing individuals that make that work right down to a grassroots level.

“My situation with England, it’s early days still. We’re trying to build on our own performances yet, so I suppose those building blocks behind that will be probably another few steps down the road for us.

“But you look at Ireland’s performances over the last three, four years, I think everyone would be looking at them thinking that’s a very impressive team to try to emulate.”