To be fair, he isn’t the only person with this view.
Although Eddie Jones will undoubtedly be disappointed with his side’s 13-9 loss to Ireland at the Aviva Stadium at the weekend, he will be buoyed about how his side have claimed back-to-back Six Nations titles.
The ultimate aim of this English side, of course, is to lift the Web Ellis trophy in Yokohama on November 2, 2019.
For Jones, everything that this English side does between now and the World Cup is to contribute towards achieving this lofty ambition.
Jones was speaking at a media event with Advertising Week Europe where he outlined that the key aspect for his side to win rugby’s showpiece event in 2019 is to have nine leaders in his team, players who are self-reliant and who can set a standard to the rest of the team.
“We don’t have the density now to win a World Cup, I reckon you need to have about nine players who are absolutely self-reliant, self-disciplined, who just get on with the job. No one has to tell them what to do.”
One of the main ways of achieving this is by blooding young players in the most difficult of Test match environments and Jones fulfilled this to an extent when injuries forced his hand in the early rounds of the Six Nations.
Jones then reiterates his mantra of winning the World Cup in 2019 but he also admits how difficult it will be, citing how it took the All Blacks 12 years to win the World Cup.
“We’re racing the clock here. We’re trying to put a six to eight-year project into four years. It took them (All Blacks) twelve years to win a world cup.”
Jones starts off listing the All Blacks’ failures from the 2003 edition of the tournament but of course, they lifted the Web Ellis trophy in 2011, eight years on from 2003, not twelve.
“2003 they’re beaten by Australia in the semi-final, 2007 got beaten in the quarter-final by France, 2011 they win the world cup at home because they got a referee who was terrified to leave New Zealand…”
Jones disregards their 2011 achievement because he recalls the controversial performance of South African referee, Craig Joubert.
Infamously, there were a number of contentious calls in that game, most notably Joubert failing to notice New Zealand players who were offside, in addition to scrum interpretation and not stopping play for a head injury to Morgan Parra.
It seems that Jones is among the many out there who believe France should have won that day.
You can watch this interesting interview here.
