But I thought Jones said that he couldn’t use Exeter players because they played to a script too much and not enough heads up rugby.
I think everything that comes out of the Eddie Jones PR machine is BS.
Closer to 90% (and even then, there's reason behind it)
A good proportion of what Eddie says is to distract attention from players and onto himself
A good proportion of what Eddie says is to throw a bomb and give the media something to speculate on and garner hits
A good proportion of what Eddie says is to distract and mislead opponents
A good proportion of what Eddie says is to motivate his own players; in the way that he wants
Sometimes though, he'll let slip exactly what he means - and those moments are gold; but can be difficult to pick in advance - benefit of hindsight, and paying attention to what he says, what he's said previously, and what he's actually done helps, but even that isn't perfect.
The big ones for Eddie are all about work rate and fitness (specifically, the high-tempo fitness he's after) - so when he says that Ben Youngs is fat; or that Odugwu or Mercer are lazy - he doesn't mean that in the way most of us would think, but he does mean it in terms of what he specifically is looking for - he's looking for those players to fight like hell to get back in alignment as quickly as they possibly can, and to do that EVERY time they fall out of alignment, and have the energy levels to do that for 100 minutes. He's looking at "bounce time" he's looking at running back into the line. Most coaches and players happy for you to wonder back into the line after making a telling contribution, and conserve a little energy. I happen to thin that this is the biggest reason why new players are introduced gradually, it's extremely demanding, an the whole system potentially falls apart if just 1-2 pieces aren't where they need to be.
In 2018 he told us all in advance that he wanted the players to start each match with the depleted energy levels - and everyone was up in arms when we played as if we our energy levels were too low.
In 2020 he told us all that he wanted to avoid a confidence sapping run of bad results; form can go hang, it's results that matter - and everyone was up in arms that we weren't playing with good form but still won 8 from 9, with 2 pieces of silverware.
In 2021 he told us all that he wasn't looking to work on the attack yet - and everyone was up in arms that we weren't trying to attack.
www.bbc.com
