England Rugby's Eddie Jones

The overarching feeling from Friday's press conference is that England are in good hands however there is plenty for Eddie Jones to get his teeth into and we all know how quickly time is ticking by, the RBS 6 Nations is just over 70 days away.
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A man that knows what he wants and one that won't be afraid to ruffle a few feathers to get it, that is my assessment of Eddie Jones following his first press conference in charge of England Rugby.

The 55 year old is straight talking and focused, he knows the task at hand and has a management and personal style that will be good for both the RFU and England's players. Eddie Jones is not a quiet individual, he will not shirk away from any issue and will certainly say exactly what needs to be said. In short, it will be hugely interesting to see how the union and England's players react to him.

"There are two things that you need to win games of rugby, you need to have talent and you need cohesion. There's plenty of talent in England so the thing that we have to work on is cohesion - that's about identifying what are going to be the strengths of the team, making sure that we keep improving those and identifying those areas where we can have a competitive edge."

For Eddie these areas of competitive edge and England Rugby's points of difference will be dictated by the players he has at hand;

"As I said I think that the traditions of English rugby is to have a strong set piece and to be defensively strong and then to score points you need to be able to score points off your ball and you need to be able to score points off the opposition ball. If you have got all of those things in place then you have got a team that is hard to beat, that's the reality."

"Again, if you look at the All Blacks as the benchmark that is why they are so hard to beat... but if you look at the All Blacks 10 years ago when Australia used to beat them regularly they were fundamentally poor at the lineout and their scrum could be scratchy. So there was always a way to get to them, but now their lineout is strong and their scrum is strong. They can score off their ball, they can score off the opposition's ball and they know when to kick - they have all of the fundamentals. With England, we've got to make sure that we create a team like that but it is going to be our way of doing that and how we attack is going to depend on the skills of the players."

At the heart of any side is a captain, Eddie has previously quite heavily criticised Chris Robshaw and openly said that one of his first tasks will be to speak one on one with Chris. To be very clear Eddie is not making any guarantees with any individual, instead he has clearly articulated that 'everyone starts from zero' and that will be music to many players' ears across the country. This will be Eddie Jones' England and no-one else's and he will select the players that he believes will create a winning team regardless of history.

A clear focus is developing England's style of play, one that is unique to England and ensuring that this England squad going forwards is also being pragmatic about their approach. Adaptability is king to win matches and you get the feeling that England's players will know about it if they forget that and start becoming one dimensional - Jones will not beat about the bush.

The question remains as to the individuals that will support the charismatic Australian, currently Andy Farrell, Mike Catt and Graham Rowntree are under contract from the RFU however they may not remain:

"In terms of the coaching staff I start on the 1st of December and I'll assess the coaches that have been here and the staff that have been here. I want to speak to all of them individually and work out what they can offer going forwards. If they can offer what I want, then they are going to have a job and if they don't then I'll look at other options."

That said, Eddie was very clear that part of his remit over the next four years is to develop English coaches to take over from him after that point. Eddie sees this England Rugby role as a four year project and no more, so given that context there will be a great focus on the make up of his back room team.

Right now England's new head coach has a few commitments to finish, one with World Rugby regarding the development of Tier 2 nations and then the small matter of picking up his wife and moving to England.

The overarching feeling from Friday's press conference is that England are in good hands however there is plenty for Eddie Jones to get his teeth into and we all know how quickly time is ticking by, the RBS 6 Nations is just over 70 days away.