Grudge match? You ain't seen nothing yet

14 April 2012

The ceasefire is the most fragile in rugby history but it was still holding last night. The chances of it staying in place for the rest of the week are slim.

Clive Woodward and Eddie Jones, the coaches whose countries meet in the World Cup Final here on Saturday, have been at each other's throats since fate set them on a collision course two years ago.

They have had rucks over anything and everything, the eclectic choice of subjects including their respective treatment of former rugby league players, with Jones attacking Woodward for rushing to pick Henry Paul before he had 'earned the jumper'.

It produced an immediate expression of 'annoyance' from Woodward, followed by an accusation that Jones lacked the 'balls' to bring his league converts, Mat Rogers and Wendell Sailor, on a British tour two years ago.

No recent England-Australia Test has passed without one slagging the other off or both doing it almost simultaneously.

In Melbourne last June, for example, Woodward accused Jones of a 'premeditated' attempt to pressurise the referee among other barbs. He soon found himself bracketed with the most hated England captain in these parts, Douglas Jardine of cricket's notorious 'Bodyline' Ashes series in the early Thirties.

While the Jones-Woodward jousting on the global stage may be comparatively recent, they go back far enough to have collected a fair bit of baggage between them.

Nobody knows for sure exactly where it all began, but there is every chance that the grudge match behind the biggest single event in rugby union history had its origins in the Sydney Premiership during the mid-Eighties.

Back then, Woodward was an ex-England centre playing for Manly in between learning how to surf on the beach across the road from the local Oval. Randwick, on the other side of the city, were their big rivals and who should be in their first team? None other than a feisty, flinty hooker by the name of Eddie Jones.

Philip Cox, capped 16 times by Australia at scrum half and a colleague of Woodward's at Manly, remembers it well. 'Maybe that's where it all began between them,' he said. 'It's as likely a place as any because Randwick was the big game and Eddie was pretty good on the gab. There'd have been a fair bit of sledging. I don't know whether Eddie caught Clive at the bottom of the ruck and gave him plenty, or whether it was something else, but it doesn't take much these days for one to have a go at the other.

'You wouldn't have guessed back then that one day they'd each be coaching teams playing in the final of the World Cup.

'Clive was well respected when he came out here from England and the boys were happy to have him in the side.

'He was a typical rugby player who enjoyed playing and loved the social scene afterwards. But I never had an inkling that he would make it big as a coach. I know they get stuck into each other but it's good for the game.'

Woodward spent five years at Manly before going home to begin his improbable coaching path via Henley, London Irish and Bath to become England's first professional coach in September 1997.

Just as he had headed for Australia, so Jones made the opposite journey to Leicester, by coincidence Woodward's old club.

His career there was so brief that it is almost as if it never took place.

'I don't remember him at all,' said the Tigers' most famous hooker, former England captain Peter Wheeler, last night. 'I think he may have played one first-team game but I could be wrong.'

In fact Jones played three but he only started one, a friendly against Bedford in January 1992.

Ironically, he would have been rubbing shoulders at the time with a promising 21-year-old secondrow forward who will re-appear on Saturday as one of the major reasons why the Wallabies might fall at the final hurdle - Martin Johnson.

Matt Poole, then Johnson's second-row partner, had gone to Randwick the previous summer and cleared the way for Jones to make a reciprocal visit to the east Midlands.

'My memories of him are of a very dedicated, very organised bloke,' said Poole.

'He was quite an accomplished player and a keen student of the game who understood it very well.'

Both in their mid-forties, the coaches share a passion for cricket. Jones' first experience of Anglo-Australian combat was of the more explosive variety, the day in 1971 when England fast bowler John Snow was attacked by a spectator at the Sydney Cricket Ground after one of his bouncers had struck tailender Terry Jenner on the head.

'Mate, that was the first Test match I ever saw,' said Jones. 'I went with my Dad and I've never forgotten the job Ian Chappell did as captain of Australia. I'd have to put him right up there at the top of my personal list.'

Like Chappell, Jones has a sparky, street-wise attitude which has helped make him just about the smartest coach in the game, along with Woodward.

While his English bete noire, the son of an RAF officer, had a middle - class English upbringing and went on to play for his country, Jones was brought up in one of Sydney's tougher workingclass districts and never quite made it as a Wallaby.

Ironically, he was the firstchoice hooker at Randwick when Bob Dwyer, then Australia's coach, catapulted Jones' understudy, P h i l Kearns, straight into the national team.

A geography teacher by profession, Jones has a Japanese mother and an Australian father who met in Japan shortly after the end of the Second World War.

The Wallaby coach, whose wife, Hiroko, is also Japanese, coached the national team in Tokyo before returning to his native Sydney five years ago on his rapid climb to take charge of the Wallabies.