Sideline Cut: Eddie Jones’s disdain for popularity contests is reason England are back

Don't look now but without much fanfare, the England rugby team is playing for a 13th Grand Slam. Muffled was the laughter around the 'home countries' during last autumn's tragic-comic fall from grace for England but in the space of five quick months, the old order has been restored.

As the Six Nations tournament enters its final weekend, it has produced a scenario applicable to so many seasons through the 1990s. England and France are squaring up for a match loaded with historical emotion and current bragging rights. Scotland are looking as if they might do something special. Wales are griping with the world. Italy are treading water and causing the lifeguard some concern.

And Ireland? Well, Ireland are banking on a win against Scotland to take something from their season. Somewhere in deepest England, Billy Beaumont is nodding in approval and Brian Moore's got that quivering note of patriotism back in his voice. Send her Victorious! This is March-time as they know it.

Last September, with the World Cup looming, England coach Stuart Lancaster shared his thoughts on what lay ahead in a video essay for The Guardian. Lancaster spoke from the heart about what it meant to be English. He made remarks about inclusivity which Donald Trump would consider weak and treasonous. He spoke about trying to instil his squad with the virtues of Englishness, tapping into the history of rugby union in his country and emphasising the right to be self-confident – without being arrogant.

He struck all the right notes and it was plain to see that the enormity of his role – head coach of an England team playing official host of the tournament – meant a lot to him. Lancaster was sincere and likeable and he had grafted his way up the ladder of English rugby.

Rugby culture of the north

He didn’t have a glittering playing career on which to launch his managerial career; he had emerged in the rugby culture of the north, of Penrith and Leeds. He was clearly a decent bloke and he said something which should have set alarm bells ringing deep in the minds of England’s rugby custodians: “There is no arrogance in this England team.”

Really? Not even a smidgen? Has an England rugby team any business taking the field without retaining some of the brio and entitlement which anyone who watched the all-whites for, oh, the past century has come to expect? It has quickly been forgotten that England were second favourites to lift the Webb Ellis trophy last autumn. When it came to the critical minutes of their campaign, particularly the nervous-breakdown against Wales, it was true that they exhibited no arrogance. The trouble was that they exhibited nothing else either, suffering from a paralysing lack of conviction and organisation and leadership. They froze.

The World Cup campaign ended early and ingloriously. As if Lancaster didn’t feel bad enough, accusatory headlines in the pink pages suggested that England’s flop had cost Dave Cameron’s economy three billion notes. Lancaster was bounced out of his job in short order and the true cost of his failure became apparent in February when he was not in the running in the decision to replace Conor O’Shea at Harlequins.

By then, the England rugby team had moved under the care of a new personality. If Lancaster was a too pre-occupied with how England rugby was perceived, then Eddie Jones could clearly care less if the Roses become the most hated team in world sport.

Jones is only 56 but seems to have been around international rugby forever; one of the many natural-born schoolmasters who laid down the roll book once the game went professional in the mid-1990s.

It must have taken a strong potion of that word, humility, for the RFU to abandon an unbroken series of English coaches dating back to Don White in 1969 when they awarded Jones the task of repairing the broken confidence of the national team. When Lancaster spoke about inclusiveness, he probably didn’t have this in mind.

Last autumn’s ‘World Cup’ truly lived up to that concept on that madcap day in Brighton when Jones’s Japan team beat South Africa 34-32. It was thrilling because what everyone was watching seemed unbelievable, dreamlike. It was probably slightly less of a shock to those Springboks who remembered just how crucial a role Jones had played as a member of the coaching staff for the 2007 World Cup.

And too little attention was paid to Japan’s form line under Jones. In fact, too little attention was paid to the 121-0 victory his team posted over the lowly Philippines in 2013. It was only 43-0 at the break, which meant Jones team, rather than pulling up, went out and piled 78 points on their hapless opponents in the second half. It was pure sporting butchery under Jones’s approving eye.

Irish sensibilities

In his first term as England coach, he has won the Triple Crown. He has managed to offend Irish sensibilities with provocative remarks about Jonathan Sexton. He could care less. This week, he has barely suppressed his indifference to the diplomatic incident arising from comments allegedly made by England's Joe Marler to Wales Samson Lee when their teams met last weekend.

He emphasised the fact that he comes from a different culture by pulling down an old Wallaby favourite, grousing that the Welsh don't know whether they are "Arthur or Martha" in the row, slang straight out of The Sullivans. And he really doesn't care: he has a Grand Slam to think about.

He doesn’t care what you think about Dylan Hartley either, the player axed from Lancaster’s World Cup squad for head-butting Jamie George in a club match. Eddie didn’t care about that. He said he liked the way that Hartley chatted to the catering staff at breakfast time; that he was polite and down-to-earth. He made Hartley England’s bulldog, and captain.

And watch Hartley lead England out into the Stade de France. There will be no doubting the intent in his walk and the fire in his eyes. Hear the French baying as they catch sight of an English team they can recognise: bruising, up for belligerence and full of certainty about what they want to do and be.

It will be no surprise if some Englishman or other – perhaps Hartley! – does something to incense the French either. Jones won’t mind, as long as they win. And if there is a bit of arrogance in their step, he will live with that.

It’s been a dreary Six Nation, criminally unimaginative and characterised by petty exchanges, but the revitalisation of old England by this spiky survivor has been the stand-out story.