All Blacks v Wallabies Bledisloe Cup: Eddie Jones’ cheeky dig before clash - misread or mischievous?

Wallabies head coach Eddie Jones during a training session. Photo / Photosport

OPINION

It’s hard to know whether it was a misread or a mischievous read by Wallabies coach Eddie Jones when he said the All Blacks haven’t yet been put under pressure in 2023 and that he was confident that would change in Melbourne.

In every way, this was classic Jones – bombastic, dismissive, deflective and optimistic and an early reminder to the Australian press pack that he lives for these moments, these opportunities to give them the headline they weren’t quite expecting.

Two games into his second coaching stint with the Wallabies and Jones has experienced two defeats, and in the wake of the last-minute loss to the Pumas, the question everyone in Australia rightly wanted to ask was how he felt about facing the All Blacks next?

His wobbly Wallabies surely must be a little nervous about facing a New Zealand team that have been almost imperious in their opening two games of 2023, cranking into a new gear that some have doubted they would ever find.

Some of Jones’ predecessors would have taken the opportunity to play up to that and build the legend of the All Blacks to enforce the narrative of the Wallabies as the underdogs.

But not Jones. He doesn’t seem to do this whole idea of under-promise and over-deliver, and this is precisely why he’s been put back in charge of the Wallabies.

They want him to instil within the team his battling qualities. To never know when they are beaten and to find that classic Aussie digger psyche.

There’s just this hint that among Australia’s most influential rugby people there is a belief that the Wallabies have lost the mental toughness that enabled them to defy the odds and win two World Cups in the 1990s.

Jones is there to be a disruptor, an agitator to those players who think there should be some kind of comfort level to be found in the test arena and hence he was never going to facilitate stories that enforced the All Blacks as the superior team and agree that his team should be concerned to the point of being fearful about what might happen in Melbourne.

Instead, he said: “I quite fancy ourselves against New Zealand. They haven’t been put under any pressure yet. And I think we’ve got the ability to put them under some pressure.”

His suggestion that the All Blacks haven’t yet been put under pressure would certainly seem to be a misread.

In their two games so far in 2023 the All Blacks haven’t had any specific component of their game put under significant duress and nor did they have to battle the scoreboard at any stage.

Both their wins, on the surface, came relatively easy but the inference Jones makes is that neither South Africa nor Argentina played well enough to really be sure about the All Blacks.

He’s painting those two wins as soft victories for the All Blacks, as if they simply encountered two good teams on respective bad days.

Which isn’t the case at all, because what really happened is that the All Blacks played with such precision, accuracy and dynamism as to ensure that they never gave their opposition the opportunity to put them under sustained pressure.

South Africa and Argentina were only able to play as well as New Zealand allowed, and this brings Jones’s other point about Australia having the ability to be the ones to put the All Blacks under real pressure, into consideration.

Is that him being mischievous or simply honest? Do the Wallabies, who have lost the past five Bledisloe Cup tests, now have the all-court game they need to seriously trouble the All Blacks?

Results haven’t so far suggested that the Wallabies have turned a corner, but there are at least bits and pieces of their game which look to be working better now than they were last year.

Their pack has gained a physical edge by injecting Will Skelton and they have a depth of front-rowers who can all scrummage.

In Rob Valetini they have the ball-carrying No 8 that the best Wallaby teams of old have relied on and in Nic White they have one of the best game controllers in the world.

Throw in the power of Samu Kerevi and Marika Koroibete and it’s easy to see why Jones is upbeat about his team’s chances of being able to put the All Blacks under pressure.

He’s obviously seen enough from his troops in their first two outings to believe a performance is on the way and while he may not be right in saying the All Blacks haven’t yet been put under pressure, he may not be wrong to have implied his team are going to provide a different and perhaps stiffer test to the one presented by the Pumas and Springboks.