The Wallabies coach believes cultural traits transform to on-field performance.
Twenty years ago, then Wallabies coach Eddie Jones told me he believed the playing styles of national rugby union teams matched the essential traits of their countries. “National sides try to keep their styles,” he said. “When we go out to play, we take our cultures with us.”
Jones’s comments open him up to accusations of rampant generalisation and racial stereotyping. His defenders will argue he is not known for filtering his views via the lens of political correctness and, as the son of a Japanese mother and an Australian father, he has been subject to ethnic cliches himself.
He was interested in the increasing polarisation of Australia between a progressive left and a conservative right and the alienation of the working class by the elites of both sides. Of his former team England where he enjoyed an unparalleled run of success, he said they are still very conservative, more concerned with not losing, rather than winning.“They still like that containment,” he said of England. “They want to put you in a corner and surround you, like the old colonial power they once were. They don’t let you out.”Credit:Of Japan, he says with a degree of pride, “They play very clinically. They believe there is a solution to everything, including lack of height.
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