Five losses in as many matches at the head of Australia do not prevent Eddie Jones from thinking that his Wallabies can “win the World Cup” of rugby, he repeated Thursday two days before their first match, against Georgia in group C. “We made good progress. We went through a period of setting up the team structure to put ourselves in the position that is ours: that of being able to win the World Cup,” assured the Australian coach, returned to the head of the team in January 2023.
The ex-boss of the XV de la Rose, thanked at the end of last year, is still waiting for a first success since his return to the controls of the Wallabies marked by five losses, including one against Argentina in Sydney (34-31) in July. On this occasion, he compared his team to his first car, a “Datsun”: “We repaired the handbrake and the next day, the windshield wipers broke down,” he described.
From now on ? “We are an F1 car,” assures Eddie Jones. “We are starting to understand how we want to play, what our strengths are. We are going to develop a truly unique style of play, which suits us. We’re ready to leave. We’re just waiting for the lights to go out.” His Wallabies inherited an extremely homogeneous Group C, with in addition to Georgia, Fiji, Wales and, to a much lesser extent, Portugal.