‘You’ve Worn the Green and Gold and that makes you special’, Alan Jones is fond of saying.1 Winning the national colours is a proud achievement for any Australian. Alan Jones’ Wallabies came to notice their coach’s fastidious fondness for his green and gold tracksuit. The uniform formalised Jones’ belief that he was indeed special. Between 1982 and 1984 Alan Jones went from coaching subdistrict rugby to controlling the national team, a bit like jumping from a go-cart into a Formula One racing car. So how did he do it?
The answer is in the intervening year. In 1983, Alan Jones seized an opportunity to prove his special talents, winning the Sydney rugby premiership in his first year as a senior coach. It was a brilliant year, the first in a period that gave Alan Jones an undeniable and deserved place in history. Despite being scorned for his scant playing credentials, Alan Jones had spent 20 years improving his understanding of the game. Like swimming coach Don Talbot and athletics coach Percy Cerutty, Alan Jones was another to show you don’t have to be a top athlete to be a top coach. As is often the case, there was luck, too. Perhaps it is serendipity that brings good athletes together, or perhaps, like a pearl, excellence is formed organically, in its own time. And again, it might be that a catalyst, an agent of change, is needed to bring out the best.
In the early 1980s, the Australian national rugby team was talented but underperforming. The same was true of one of the Sydney clubs, Manly, which, despite bragging of 13 representative footballers, had not won a premiership since 1950. The northern beachside club had fallen at the Grand Final in 1981 and stumbled again after winning the minor premiership in 1982.
Rob Lane, the team coach, had formed a competitive side with an exceptional forward pack, but what continued to be missing was a winning culture. At Manly, like Sydney University, the notion of appointing a blow-in to fix the problem was sacrilege. Manly had never appointed an outsider. As the big Manly captain and international Steve Williams put it: ‘The Eastern Hill mafia would not accept you unless you came to your first Manly match in a pram’.
But at the end of 1982 Jones’ name was put forward, with the strongest push again coming from King’s School connections. Ross Reynolds (class of 1976), a New South Wales back rower, knew Jones as an athletics coach, and Tony McGeoch (class of 1974), another New South Wales representative, had been the fullback in Jones’ winning King’s team. McGeoch felt ‘the club needed someone like Alan Jones. We had the talent, but not the achievement.’2
In 1982, while managing the New South Wales team, Alan Jones became reacquainted with some of these players and made known his wish to coach. When the Manly squad headed for the United States in October for an end of season tour Ross Reynolds, in particular, pressed Jones’ case to the Manly club president. Reynolds was so confident he told Peter Bradstreet, ‘If we get him we will win’.
When he returned Bradstreet invited Jones to lunch; Alan told his young backers he would neither hedge nor beg: ‘Look, if they’re interested they can talk to me … and I straight away told them what I had been saying for the last 20 years … you’re failing because the system, the structures are wrong, the methodology is wrong’.3
Concerned about Alan Jones’ lack of senior experience, Peter Bradstreet was attentive but cautious. ‘What got through to me was his psychological approach, which was superior to his rugby knowledge.’ Although Jones thought he had talked his way out of a job, the opposite was the case. Club officials were taken with the pitch, and the majority of the club soon were too. When the 1983 season began the entire squad gathered for a breakfast. Accompanied by the scent of sausages carried on the warm coastal winds, Alan Jones spoke for 45 minutes, with never a stumble or hesitation. Veteran clubman Bob Kirkwood said, ‘It was like a machine gun’.
Alan Jones was taking on a lot, not just coaching the firsts, but acting as club coach as well. James Black, who would be his most famous favourite at Manly, was struck by Jones’ phenomenal memory: ‘He knew the name of every first grader and every fifth grader’.
Jones was welcomed into the northern beachside community as well, making good friends that helped maintain a kinship with Manly. The club vice president, local solicitor and Liberal Party organiser Ian ‘Macca’ McDonald, would continue to get loyal support from Alan Jones well after his gaoling for fraud. Naturally enough, he also found a support base among other local Liberals. Not long gone from Canberra, he was happy to share his insider’s knowledge. One young friend recalls him confident that pretender Bob Hawke would not roll Opposition Leader Bill Hayden. But come March 1983 he got it right. When asked how Malcolm Fraser would go against Bob Hawke in the federal election, Alan Jones predicted his former boss had ‘not a chance’.
The Employers’ Federation was generous, too, in allowing Jones time to attend to his Manly commitments. Garry Brack never saw Alan Jones let football get in the way. Players saw their coach arriving, sometimes in a white chauffeur-driven Holden Statesman, and changing out of his suit after a speaking engagement or a new round of industrial negotiations. Rugby was then an amateur game, which meant Alan Jones would receive no payment. It was a substantial commitment. The 6.30 Tuesday and Thursday night Curl Park training sessions would increase in frequency and intensity as the year progressed.
The players soon saw that Alan Jones was more than talk. A new second rower Jones lured from Sydney University, Peter FitzSimons, became close before later exile from what he called the JIC, the Jones Inner Circle. FitzSimons, however, still thinks of Jones as the best coach he had in any sport. ‘Australian rugby up to that early part of the 1980s, it’s going a bit too far to say it was a collection of people who just liked to run into each other, but it certainly wasn’t a science … I remember being a little shocked when I first came across the concept of tackle counts.’4
Peter FitzSimons was another surprised upon arriving at training to receive two or three foolscap pages of detailed observations and instructions. Alan Jones was one of the first to use video cameras to dissect performance in detail. If he saw a vulnerability to being beaten on the outside, he would adjust the angle of defence. If he saw a weakness passing to the left, he would re-educate his players in basic human movement.
Peter Bradstreet was amazed, watching Jones take command of these huge men. ‘He had them in the palm of his hand. He was able to convince them to listen and do what he wanted them to do.’ James Black felt the improvement. Instincts formerly dormant were suddenly found when the need arose. ‘Some people say practice makes perfect but Jones would say perfect practice makes perfect’.
The results came quickly. On 4 June 1983, the Manly Blues walked over their neighbour, Warringah, 41–6. Peter FitzSimons took the best and fairest award. The club felt an immediate lift in confidence.
They also felt the additional aches and pains, Alan Jones as ever lifting the physical intensity of training. And like Jones’ earlier teams, Manly felt the shock of new standards of discipline. When Tony ‘Squeak’ McGeoch was delayed by the drawbridge at the Spit and arrived late through an early morning fog, he met a force 10 Jones gale: ‘You have got to clear your hip pocket of excuses’. McGeoch, well used to Jones, handled his coach better than most. ‘He was forever testing people. He knew that in the heat of battle there are no excuses. He was getting us ready and it was a mistake to bite back.’
Peter FitzSimons, staring down at an enraged Jones, could not help it when he copped a serve. The blood raced to his head and the massive fists began to clench. ‘Alan, don’t ever speak to me like that. I’ll walk. I don’t play rugby to be spoken to like that. Not now, not ever.’ But Jones, on tiptoes, held his ground, forcing FitzSimons to bow. FitzSimons says Jones ‘brought his mouth close to my ear and sort of curled it around and said do you want to take me on, Fitzsy, do you want to take me on?’5
In this steamy locker room environment, Jones’ law came into its own. A condition of the Jones relationship, that he must dominate, was fair enough with experienced athletes who expected the coach to be boss. One of Jones’ consistent beliefs, that players should be unapologetic in pursuit of victory, also suited. Manly, a perpetual runner-up, warmed to the feel of winning. Captain Steve Williams saw his players happy to buy in to the success. Tony McGeoch also found it infectious: ‘When a team is successful you don’t talk about what is bad’. Generally it was an unusually harmonious year for Alan Jones, although there was a dip halfway through the season when the Blues lost two in a row. Peter FitzSimons can still picture Alan Jones after a loss to St George, his head in his hands, lamenting, ‘I’ll be a laughing stock’.6
While the essential strength in the team was in the forwards pack, there were problems too. FitzSimons, one of the players least inclined to follow Jones’ instructions, instead grabbing the ball and taking his chances, was on occasions offside with team mates as well as with Jones. Like others before him FitzSimons was conscious that Jones was interested in talent, ‘but he prized more highly those who were prepared to follow an established game plan’.7
Alan Jones, not at his best coaching forwards, had a remedy. He got on the phone to his Brisbane mate, Alex Evans, and asked for help. Soon Evans began to fly to Sydney for specialist coaching sessions. Ten years later, coaches routinely called upon sprint trainers, weight trainers, kicking coaches, physiotherapists, nutritionists, psychologists and more. But back then assistants were rare. President Peter Bradstreet has no memory of Alan Jones asking for additional expenses. He presumed Jones made the arrangements and covered Evans’ costs.
Steve Williams and the others in the pack found their performance lifting in the line-outs and scrums. It was not just a matter of improving their grunt, but also of integrating the strengths and multiskilling the team. Evans and Jones threw out old notions of forwards working like shunting engines while the backs stood off searching the crowd for a pretty girl. They wanted continuous motion from backs who could push and forwards who could pass. Manly recovered its momentum. After the two losses in June, the Blues won their next five matches.
The real test was to be Randwick. Like the New Zealand All Blacks, the famous Greens had an intimidating reputation. Their coach was the Australian coach, Bob Dwyer. Their captain was the Australian captain, Mark Ella, the game’s most famous player. There was more, not just two extra Ellas, but a nucleus of internationals who for five straight years had helped Randwick to the Shute Shield.
In the final game of the second round the Manly Blues and Randwick Greens played a 20–all draw. When Mark Ella rescued his team after Manly led 14–4 at half-time, he helped set up an exciting final series that saw the teams meet again in the Grand Final.
After a tough 1982, Jones was enjoying his better fortune. He became well known at some of the harbourside dining establishments, where he would haul out his trick of ghost-calling the Melbourne Cup. The improved income from the Employers’ Federation also helped cultivate a taste for the good life. Boxes of Penfolds Grange addressed to Mr Jones were delivered to the club and often generously shared with selected players who dined until late at night at Chippendale. ‘We never put our hand in our pocket’, says one who thought Jones was ‘a different bloke’ then.
While Alan Jones’ gifts were well received, a few cracks were showing. Predictably, the largest resulted from his habit of picking favourites. The elegant inside centre James Black, who easily held his place in the team, took the brunt. Jones gave his full attention to the shy bank teller, spending a lot of time on more than his football. Black found the mentorship beneficial, his confidence improving on and off the field. ‘Jones had an enormous influence on my life. I was naturally reserved. It was the way I was brought up, but in rugby aggression is required.’
Alan Jones’ bachelor status, a matter of indifference to schoolboy footballers, was more of a talking point among adult men. The players would wonder out loud. Their coach was not seen with women, but neither was he explicit in his relationship with men. Like the adolescents before them, young men who spent hours with Alan reported that Jones never made an obvious advance. Some players thought he must have been asexual. Others remained suspicious that something was being hidden.
But when he turned up at the footy ground wearing a pink sweater, and when he gave someone that adoring look, word was bound to spread. Occasionally it found its way into the barrackers’ chant. If a Jones favourite fumbled a kick or missed a tackle, a cry might go up: ‘Pull him off, Alan’, and a titter would ripple through the crowd. Alan Jones seemed not to hear. Players who took a lot of sledging on field blocked it out, like James Black: ‘If you let it affect you it will affect you’.
As Grand Final day approached, Randwick, the minor premiers, was favoured to win. But there was more at stake than the Shute Shield. To Jones, the contest was about subjugation as well as victory. The Manly coach was sniping for Bob Dwyer’s job as Australia’s coach. The 347 grade game veteran player turned coach was very different to Jones, and just as quicksilver Randwick was vulnerable to the more disciplined Manly play, there was a weakness in Dwyer’s defence of the Wallabies job. Though ranked as second only to the All Blacks, in July and August his team lost matches they should have won against Argentina and New Zealand.
Before the September Grand Final, Alan Jones spoke with his friend Ross Turnbull, chairman of New South Wales Rugby: ‘Well Alan was on the New South Wales Rugby Union and he approached me … and said he would like to coach Australia, and I was pretty unhappy with the way that the Australian team was performing … and I said … so it’s pretty simple, mate, if Manly beat Randwick, I will support you as the Australian coach’.8
Alan Jones’ team was well prepared. On the preceding Monday they had a meeting. On Tuesday they trained hard against a co-opted side. And ‘on Wednesday we began our taper off, urging one another of the finality of the days ahead. Thursday night proceeded to plan with a growing confirmation within the team that it was just a matter of time before the Shute Shield hung in the Manly Club … As the time passed, the team’s resolution became total. The job would be done.’9
When James Black ran onto the Sydney Sports Ground he sensed ‘that something great was going to happen’. Fullback Tony McGeoch also noticed calmness overtake the side, confidence never deserting them even when the scores were close. Captain Steve Williams, who scored Manly’s sole try, kept his side to the Jones game plan. ‘The ball probably went out the back line no more than four times. The five eighth was instructed to kick, and if he didn’t James Black, acting as a second five eighth, used his long raking kick.’ The Ellas were rushed and flustered and not allowed to play their natural game.
As the clock ticked towards the final minute, Manly led 12–10, but a potential loss was only a drop-kick away. After the siren sounded, Mark Ella received the ball from a scrum within range of a field goal. He lined up for a left foot kick, well within his ability. Manly players burst forward to unsettle Ella, forcing him to kick with his right boot. The next few seconds might have been the most important in Jones’ professional life. A victory on this day opened doors that might never open again. Winning a premiership in your first year is an indicator of brilliance. It is not enough to be almost brilliant.
Mark Ella has spoken wistfully of that fateful moment: ‘I probably was selfish. Manly had a good scrum. They wheeled the ball. Come out to me. I had a shot. Missed. Alan Jones got the Wallaby job.’10 The Randwick and Australian captain was unusually tormented. ‘There have been Test matches I’ve lost where it didn’t really bother me too much because I knew at least we had done our best. But after that match I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Not for weeks.’11 Maybe there was intuitive foreboding about Jones, Ella being close to Dwyer. ‘Jonesy knew my position. We may have spoken. I don’t know whether we made phone calls, but he knew I was supportive of Bob.’12
In the stand Peter Bradstreet had one of those moments clubmen live for. Alan Jones standing on the sideline beamed as his players jogged from the field, saving his embrace for James Black. His favourite had made an important game-turning tackle and had kicked two penalties and a conversion. According to Manly half Phillip Cox, ‘His boot won us the Grand Final’.
As Alan often says, ‘Winners have parties and losers have meetings.’13 That night the beer flowed freely at the Manly Rugby Club. Phillip Cox was grateful that ‘Jones never stopped us from having fun after a game’.14 Peter Bradstreet tried not to worry about how an amateur club could afford to dispense free beer. James Black still counts the achievement of ‘winning a Premiership with your mates’ as a highlight of his life. At Manly it had not happened in 33 years. The local mayor organised a street parade. A ball was held in honour of the team at the newly opened Manly Pacific Hotel, a surfside landmark owned by the Kalajzich family.
The story of Manly’s win has a postscript that became better remembered than the win itself. The day after the match the rumour began at the front bar of the Steyne Hotel and it continues to circulate in many a back bar to this day. Jones, it was said, had been seen in the back seat of his car in the car park of the clubhouse the night before, kissing and cuddling with James Black. In the way of hot gossip, the story took on a range of permutations.
Alan Jones was now on the wrong side of his capacity for generating legend. The tattle was damaging to his chance of winning the Wallabies job. Angry on behalf of himself and James Black, he was soon in damage control mode. Some Manly players believe he hired a private inquiry agent to identify the source of the gossip. When he learned the tale had reached the ear of fellow coach Peter Fenton, Jones rang him at 6 am, complaining that Fenton should have protested Jones’ innocence. Fenton, who worked in the film industry where homosexuality raised few eyebrows, told Jones he did not know him well enough to do that, and he did not care one way or the other if he was gay.
The gossip, as best I can tell, appears baseless. Alan Jones was well known for sitting in cars with boys. As he was sometimes chauffeured, sitting and talking in a back seat would not have been too remarkable. At the post-match ball, he and Black were seen to arrive together, with the tactile Jones’ arm draped over Black’s shoulder. Some in the club think the story sprang from this moment. Some Manly supporters, bitter about the appointment of an outsider, might have been dirty that history had proved them wrong.
James Black deserves to be better remembered for the 188 points he scored in 1983, a club record. Asked about the episode he acknowledged the story, which he says is an urban myth: ‘I have no idea how it started. It did not happen. People make up stories.’
Peter Bradstreet maintained his confidence in Jones, signing him for another season. Knowing Jones was a candidate for national coach, Bradstreet agreed that if successful, he would not be held to Manly. Caucusing became intense. There was energetic—and some thought mischievous—lobbying on both sides. Dwyer’s position weakened further when the Wallabies lost a short series in France. His record for 1982 and 1983 was five wins, six losses and a draw. His predecessor, Queensland coach Bob Templeton, was another competitor, but his 1981 team had also come back from Europe with slim pickings.
Alan Jones was said to be openly confident about the numbers, although Ross Turnbull’s ability to deliver the New South Wales votes did not assure his mate success. Delegates from different states are allowed a vote and the large Queensland bloc historically opposed the New South Wales choice. To assist with the selection an exam was set by a panel led by Dick Marks. The national coaching director, RJP Marks, had a similar connection to Alan Jones as did Alex Evans, having captained Brisbane Grammar’s First XV in 1960 and played for Australia the following year.
The candidates were Evans, Templeton, Dwyer and Jones, who later said of the outcome, ‘When the results came out I got 172 out of 180 and I won’t say where the others finished but one prominent candidate got about 123. So they were left with no choice, but they then decided not to make the examination public. That was treated as if it didn’t exist, so it didn’t advance my cause in any way.’15 The actual vote was much closer. Alan Jones had the support of New South Wales but not his home state. Queensland delegate Lyn Crowley had ‘serious reservations about Jones’, but also a problem with Bob Dwyer for having previously selected New South Wales fullback Glen Ella over Queenslander Roger Gould. Crowley was undecided until ‘in the last few seconds [he] realised [he] could not forgive Dwyer’.16
It was another great achievement for Alan. Up in Margate Charlie Jones, polite and smiling, accepted congratulations on behalf of his son. Robert, who had little to do with Alan, suppressed a tear when later speaking of his pride in his brother.17 Another Queenslander, less well disposed toward Jones, was mortified. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Evan Whitton, who had played rugby for Toowoomba Grammar rival Downlands, wrote: ‘To say that this decision is a disgrace will seem to many supporters of the game to elaborate the obvious’.18 Alan Jones added a new enemy to a lengthening list.
Ironically, Alan Jones’ media savvy and communication skills were seen as major points in his favour, at a time when a capacity to promote the game was increasing in importance. People like Dick Marks were there to help overcome Alan Jones’ perceived practical weaknesses.
The man who would controversially become his new captain, Andrew Slack, did not see too many: ‘He was very different to what we experienced before. He thought outside the square. He was very thorough and he really knew the game. Don’t believe that bullshit about how he was just a motivator … He removed himself from the old rugby culture and tried to make rules about behaviour and drinking.’
Taking the captaincy from Mark Ella and giving it to Andrew Slack made Alan Jones’ appointment even more controversial. Though not famous for training, Ella was a rugby god, so naturally gifted when he ran onto the field that, as Evan Whitton put it, ‘the game plan was Ella’.
At the end of his career Mark Ella would speak caustically of Alan Jones, but at this stage, in his easygoing way, there was no tossing of boots or slamming of locker doors. For years, though, Jones took a lot of heat over the sacking, despite the initiative having come from selectors Bob Templeton and John Bain. As Jones later explained, ‘look, it wasn’t my decision … there was strong feeling against my other two colleagues about Mark’s lack of discipline’.19 John Bain confirms Alan Jones’ account, but does not place the same emphasis on concern about Ella’s attitude to discipline: ‘Mark would have been fine for one Test, but taking all into consideration we felt that Slacky was the better captain for a longer tour’.
As at Manly, Jones was lucky the talent was there to begin with. When the best-ever sides are picked his squad figures prominently. In the Jones line-up there would be ‘the Tiger Woods of Rugby’, as he dubbed Mark Ella, and ‘the Don Bradman of Rugby’, as he dubbed David Campese. And they were just two, although there were some in his own squad who thought the earlier Wallabies even stronger.
What Alan Jones did well was apply his fresh vision to choose a team based on the strategies devised and the skills needed, rather than the conventional method of picking the best performing players and expecting their talents to synchronise. Alan Jones brought in a stocky young halfback, Nick Farr-Jones, who, like his coach, had managed only to make the seconds at high school. He also selected a line-out specialist in Steve ‘Skylab’ Cutler, to assure possession, and a clever goal kicker in Michael Lynagh, to assure points. Courage must have been required when he read out his maiden team’s names in alphabetical order—the first three being from Manly—but Alan Jones was not the first or last to favour familiar players. Indeed, the man he beat, Bob Dwyer, was known for his partiality to Randwick.
Alan Jones had to juggle work commitments for what would be a big touring year. The Employers’ Federation was at first reluctant to grant him leave, but when Alan offered to resign, an arrangement was struck whereby, for the longer periods of his absence, he would take leave without pay.20 Alan Jones remained content to subsidise rugby, which he said was his hobby.
The first trip, a ten-day tour of Fiji, was an ideal orientation exercise. Once off the plane he went into housemaster mode, specifying the standards required. The teacher in Jones was ever present in the coach. Many a parable stuck. A favourite was about the rise of the Gucci empire. One Gucci questions why they would wish to manufacture footwear that few can afford. The other Gucci replies, ‘Long after the price is forgotten the quality will remain’. For Nick Farr-Jones the lesson resonated. Jones was saying that long after the pain of training was forgotten the skills and the results would live on.
The training gear was soon soaked by tropical mud and sweat as well as rhetoric. David Campese found coping with the physical conditions easier than the verbal torrents. ‘Oh, he was pretty good. I mean I just said to him jokingly, look, can I bring my dictionary along because some of the words, I’ve got no idea what you are talking about and we had a bit of a laugh. You know, coming from Queanbeyan I had no idea.’21 Dr Bill Campbell, making his debut, enjoyed what he saw as a more ‘cerebral’ approach to the game: ‘Jones had different strategies to match different teams, which for me made rugby more interesting’. Simon Poidevin, already at a peak of fitness, was refreshed: ‘Training sessions were fun because there was a lot of variation going on’.22
Two warm-up matches showed that the games would not be a holiday either. Jones saw Fiji as a ‘very tough rugby nation. They are the sort of outfit that can knee you in the groin and give you a late tackle but because they smile with their lovely big teeth and pick you up afterwards, everyone says they are good sports.’23
On 9 June 1984, in the slosh of Suva, Jones’ Wallabies had their first Test win. The 16–3 result was celebrated in the conventional boys-on-the-road manner, stumbling to an amiable conclusion in a room shared by two of the backup players, Peter FitzSimons and Nick Farr-Jones. Close friends and equally messy, a matter of hours later Fitzy and young Nick were the last on the airport bus. The housemaster glared: ‘The room you two have been living in is a pigsty, a shambles, a shocker, a disgrace … it is not good enough when you are representing Australia’.24 Fitzsy would wait some time before pulling on the gold jersey again. But as he retreated from Jones’ inner circle, his handsome young friend began to be invited back to Chippendale more often.
There was little time to muck about. As soon as Alan Jones finished one set of interviews about football, he turned to another set of microphones, arguing the Employers’ Federation case for containing Consumer Price Index growth, and challenging the affordability of the Labor Accord. ‘The reality is quite separate from the rhetoric of Simon Crean. Just before the last election we had an arrangement reached between the ACTU and the Labor Opposition which virtually told us under the guise of an economic accord what the future economic directions of Australia were going to be.’25
Then it was back to questions about football. For the next Test, against New Zealand, there was a lot of interest. In international rugby there was no better outfit to measure your ability against. As Charlie’s son put it, ‘they were farmers. They were tough people.’26 But for the July Test in Sydney, the tough farmers could not manage to cross the Australian line. The Wallabies won 16–9. Beyond a problem with goal kicking, they were looking good.
The result was also encouraging for the Sydney team, the core of the Wallabies squad. Coached by Peter Fenton and already having beaten the two touring sides, Scotland and France, Sydney looked a reasonable chance. The first sign that Jones’ win-at-all-costs approach could bear a local price emerged when he withdrew the Wallabies who played for Sydney. Citing ‘niggling injuries and jadedness’,27 Jones’ removal of Sydney’s eight test players upset the Kiwis and Fenton, who later wrote: ‘The New Zealanders were naturally incensed, and admitted to the Sydney side after the match that they had been instructed not to associate with us at the post-match function’.28 Rugby writer Phil Wilkins said after Sydney’s 28–3 loss that 28 July 1984 was ‘the day the game died of shame’.29
There would be many more occasions on which Alan Jones’ single-mindedness offended old world rugby sensibilities. While his behaviour was selfish, it was also revolutionary. The Wallabies’ new coach was on the cusp of a new era that would carry rugby towards its current professional status. Jones was not going to apologise for trying to win, especially with the prized Bledisloe Cup just one match away.
The Brisbane venue meant a triumphant homecoming. The night before the game the team shuffled in to the Albert Street cinema to watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, an experience that seemed to fire Alan Jones’ imagination. The next day at Ballymore, the Wallabies led 12–0 after 20 minutes. But then a ghostly prophecy wrested fortune away. The All Blacks fought back to win 19–15. On Planet Alan it was all down to that bloody movie. A later radio goof-tape recorded his explanation: ‘Bloody shit. Indiana fucking Jones. The reason I lost, we lost the fucking Second Test against the All Blacks was because that movie frightened the shit out of my team the night before we played. We led 12–nil and fell apart at the seams. Fucking Hawker [centre Michael Hawker] who was terrified by snakes had the worst Test I ever had ’cause … he’d been awake all night devoured by temple snakes … bastards.’30
When the Wallabies lost the next Test and the Bledisloe Cup, it was attributed to the familiar curse of the referee. Penalties and luck went against the Aussies, just beaten 25–24. Deposed captain Mark Ella did not blame Jones: ‘I think the players on the field made bad options, basically, and we lost the game, not the coach, or his style or philosophy’.31 The setback had an upside, with Ella and Jones reaching an understanding. ‘We were playing too many set pieces, and I basically told Jonesy, that we, you know, when we go to Europe that we can’t win playing like this’.32 Speculation followed that Jones considered reinstating Ella as captain, but was dissuaded by fellow selectors.
A long tour of the northern hemisphere was about to begin and no one wanted to be bashed. The two preceding European tours had not gone well and now there was a chance to make history. Others had done it, but Australia had never won a Grand Slam, defeating all four British Isles opponents.
The training began on St Johns Oval at Sydney University, as intense as usual and with an additional Jones’ twist. Maybe it was the Welsh in him, or that ambition to sing opera. From within the adjoining St Andrew’s College chapel passing students heard the awkward strains of ‘Advance Australia Fair’, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, ‘Click Go the Shears’ and ‘I Still Call Australia Home’. The Wallabies were undertaking choir practice.
The touring party set off with a few extra bags. Although not a registered member of the tour, after Jones threatened to pay the fare himself, Alex Evans was allowed to squeeze into a Qantas economy seat: ‘I was probably the first Assistant Coach in World Rugby … the England tour was met with a bit of opposition, the Rugby Football Union weren’t very happy about an Assistant Coach coming on board, but Alan had words—as he does.’33
Alan Jones was not alone in respecting Alex Evans’ ability. Forward Simon Poidevin thought ‘Alex Evans was a great mentor for me during that tour, probably much more than Jonesy’.34 The brains trust of Jones and Evans, already strong, became formidable with the cooperation of the back line master, Mark Ella. ‘[Jones] was good at putting a game plan together. He would talk to players one on one and ask them how they thought we should play the game. He would then formulate something out of that, but if the game deviated from the plan then I would take over. He couldn’t adapt. His Assistant Coach, Alex Evans, ran the forwards and I ran the backs.’ Alan Jones concurred: ‘Mark was captain of the back line. I just didn’t interfere. He knew what he was about. My job was to give them the skills to do what they wanted to do. I didn’t ever tell a back, and wouldn’t today, where to stand.’35
With the burden of captaincy removed, however unhappily, Ella may have felt ever so slightly liberated. He made things simple for newcomers like room-mate Nick Farr-Jones, telling him: ‘Mate, whether it’s a good ball or a bad ball just chuck it to me. Fling it over your shoulder and I’ll be there.’36
Jones was also liberated, given room to attend to the big picture. He activated his sleepers, informal intelligence agents recruited on earlier missions. Steve Williams remembers the plotting. ‘Jones had a group of contacts from his Oxford days. They would watch the teams we played next. He did his homework and it made a big difference.’ The travelling Wallabies were in effect two teams. It was as if Alan was made for this job, the art of choosing favourites now a duty. The Wednesday team to play the county sides was ‘the Green Machine’, with the elites saved for the big Saturday matches.
Two preliminary games before the First Test against England gave Jones a good look at his players, and his players a good look at Jones. Notes began to appear under doors specifying appointments in Jones’ room. Nineteen-year-old Matthew Burke was off to an awkward start. Missing an appointment after falling asleep, he was subjected to ‘a lengthy and stinging Jones tirade’.37
After Jones learned of his late-night carousing, Nick Farr-Jones was also summoned. ‘As always Jones’ room was pristine in its neatness, with everything in its place and a place for everything. The tracksuit he’d worn at training that day neatly folded over the chair, his sandshoes placed precisely beside his leather shoes at the foot of the bed, English rugby magazines—which he’d been perusing for yet more information about coming opponents—neatly opened on the study desk.’38 Farr-Jones was also bawled out.
As it transpired, both Farr-Jones and Burke would make it into the Saturday side for their maiden Tests. At this stage Jones was not letting his heart rule. James Black, one of the touring party, was kept to the Wednesday side. Other Manly players also had trouble making it into the Saturday side. Not only did Farr-Jones replace Phillip Cox but Ross Reynolds was also dropped in favour of David Codey. A few other regulars were also dropped. Alan Jones spent time explaining his decisions, acting with unusual dispassion.
Players arriving outside Jones’ door would hear him at work inside. One reason for spending a lot of time inside on this tour was probably his bad back. He later explained: ‘I couldn’t walk, but I didn’t let them know that. The only person who knew that outside the team or outside Alex was Billy Calcraft. I was close to his family at Manly and Billy helped me to dress and lift me into bed … they had enough to worry about, not me, and I was alright—I was still breathing.’39
Peter Grigg noticed that ‘he sat up till the early hours of the morning watching videotapes of players and what they do and sides and how they played the game and discussed it and made notes’.40 Music could also be heard emanating from the room. The Turandot opera classic ‘Nessun Dorma’ (‘No one will sleep’), a Jones favourite, might have been his theme song. It finishes, ‘Depart oh night! Set, you stars? Set, you stars! At dawn I shall win! I shall win! I shall win!’
The side that ran onto Twickenham on 3 November was beautifully prepared. Mark Ella, swooping like a kingfisher, picked up a fingertip pass from Roger Gould in orchestrated play that finished with a Simon Poidevin try. As well, improvising a planned move, Ella glided under the posts. The Poms went down 19–3.
The beaten English were generous in their praise, impressed not just with the fluid play. At the post-match press conferences Jones’ fluency was noticed. Predecessor Bob Templeton thought Jones ‘certainly changed the role of the coach, for up to this time the manager was supposed to represent the team to the press. Jones would have none of that, and he loved holding court, and he was good at it.’41 Alan is still proud, British press reaction remaining on his cv. ‘During the tour one British newspaper described Alan Jones as “the most approachable and articulate Rugby person to visit Britain in the last 40 years”. The London Times sports writer stated that “Alan has the most analytical brain I have encountered in charge of a national side”.’42
The next stop was Ireland. When the Wallabies pulled in to Dublin’s Jury’s Inn there was amusement at the sign ‘Open 23 hours a day’. The understated Irish tended to be a more comfortable fit for the unpretentious Aussies, but less so for Alan. ‘We always knew Ireland would be a bit of a mess, ’cause it was sort of a nothing game in a way. If we got over that, I felt that we could really—against these other structured sides, we could really do the job.’43 However, not until the last 20 minutes at Lansdowne Road did the Wallabies take the lead and, eventually, the game, 16–9. It turned out to be the closest result of the series.
After Ireland it was back to Wales. While Jones was finding favour with the British press he had problems with some of his own. A traitorous Evan Whitton had written that, while Australia was winning, the team was not playing well. Whitton’s later reckoning was that it was not until Alex Evans got the scrum right that the team found its rhythm. His opinion led to one cold night for the correspondent: after one of the lead-up games, tour manager ‘Chilla’ Wilson politely told him he was not welcome to ride with the players. Whitton believed the instruction came from Jones.
The next Test was expected to be the hardest. Welsh coalminers—with names like Jones and Evans—had a reputation akin to those New Zealand sheep farmers of being able to trample the Australian private school boys into the mud. But the Welsh pits were closing down, making it harder to mine the raw strength that made their rugby players famous. The Welsh were soon to be given a lesson in strength. While Evans was putting ‘mongrel’ into the minds of the forwards, Jones was putting steel into their sinews. His English contacts helped him locate a prototype ‘Rhino Machine’, which not only toughened muscles but reduced training injuries, because the forwards did not have to practise so much on themselves. Alan Jones explained: ‘I personally paid out of my own money, someone to cart this … and of course it was the making of us because we just had a fabulous, unyielding front’.44
The big moment at Cardiff Arms Park, and perhaps of the whole tour, was on 24 November. Sixty-seven thousand predominantly Welsh spectators were hushed to unaccustomed silence. In the second half, close to the Welsh line, the Wallabies unleashed ‘Samson’, a rehearsed move. Facing eight straining Australians, the Welsh pack went backwards. Number 8, Steve Tuynman, scored and the Wallabies went on to win 28–9.
Oddly enough, the brawl that soon broke out was not on the field. Following his intervention over a fighting incident in an earlier game, Alan Jones was now in a tangle with the hated administrators. After the Welsh Test he was cited to appear before the International Rugby Board. ‘I told them to get stuffed. I’m answerable to the Australian Rugby Union, not the IRB. Many of these people are anchored in the past.’45 The episode was the first of many that exposed the gulf between what Jones expected of others and what he allowed himself. The demand he made of players for no excuses discipline did not apply to Alan.
But only on a few occasions was there insurrection. If anyone was going to stand up to Jonesy, it was Stan Pilecki. Up the back of the bus, in the belly of the beast, the big Queensland prop was his own man, a benign incarnation of the pillaging Goth. Stan, who had done plenty of tours, saw himself as ‘about Alan’s age’ (he was thirty-seven, six years younger than Jones). ‘A lot of the younger players were afraid to say anything to Alan … I had nothing to lose. I was a Wednesday player.’46
But the heavy smoker was finding Jones’ training a problem. After one tough session at Swansea, he ambled from the field with the shriek of Jones still ringing in his ears, passed the coach in his green and gold tracksuit, blew a smoke ring in his face and said, ‘I hope you are hoarse, you cunt, because I am fucking deaf’. Alan giggled, and the rest fell about laughing. Stan’s personality could defuse an unexploded bomb.
The next time it happened, Jones was not so forgiving. Before the game against Scotland Alan Jones called aside a small group of players on the brink of exhaustion after training, instructing them to keep their boots on. When Nick Farr-Jones, a touch impetuously, objected, Alan Jones let go: ‘How dare you talk to me like that! I’ll be the judge of what work you can and can’t do. I am the coach and my function is to decide such things … don’t you ever speak to me like that.’47 That night Farr-Jones knocked on Jones’ door seeking to apologise. He could hear Jones inside but the knocking was not answered. The young offender might have felt he was back at Newington College being disciplined by a master when writing a note of apology and slipping it under the door.
Something else that might have been slipped under Alan Jones’ door at this time was a copy of an editorial that should have brought further satisfaction. In Evan Whitton’s Sydney Morning Herald piece on 10 December 1984 there appeared an apology of another kind. Accepting the error of opposing Alan Jones as national coach the editorial said the record now ‘vindicated the appointment of Alan Jones earlier this year as coach, an appointment which in certain quarters received sharp criticism’.48
The next stop was Edinburgh. Could they make it four out of four? At 8 o’clock on the morning of 12 December, Alan Jones says he embarked on a clandestine mission to secure crucial intelligence. There is a whiff of hyperbole in his tale of appearing at the Murrayfield ground in the near dark to lure an unsuspecting groundsman into revealing an important secret. Jones said the Scotsman explained the way the wind rose in the second half. ‘And he said, oh, it comes from this side—right down the paddock this way … So if Scotland win the toss they’ll run this way, will they? Yeah fantastic—I said you do a great job here … thanks, mate, terrific.’49
The Australians won the toss but in the first half were tentative, fumbling the ball and seizing no advantage. After a half-time speech by captain Andrew Slack, the mood changed. Trusting their skills the Wallabies bolted, speeding through Scots standing like gums in a pasture. Michael Lynagh, assisted by Jones’ grasp of meteorology, also kicked them from everywhere. The final score, 37–12, was a record against Scotland. The Grand Slam victory was also a first for Australia.
Back in the North British hotel during the traditional post-match happy hour, deep-felt relief welled into tears. Simon Poidevin is still amazed at the scene that followed: ‘When Slacky started to speak as captain and Alan Jones even didn’t want him to speak for some reason and he started to speak and he started to get a bit emotional’.50 The heavyweight prop, Topo Rodriguez, began to cry and the rest of the team followed suit. The sense of loyalty and gratitude that many rugby players direct towards Alan Jones is deeply invested in moments like these. Players such as Stan Pilecki knew they would not have done it without him: ‘I would not call Alan a real close, you know, Christmas card sort of friend but I would always be indebted to Alan for what he’s taught me there in life, on setting goals and achieving them’.51
In a post-match speech Mark Ella also acknowledged his respect for Alan Jones’ contribution to the series. Ella, long conflicted about Jones, had played his best rugby ever, scoring a try in every Test. But still, the world’s best player was not happy. He knew Jones could coach but that did not mean he liked him. Sitting in a freezing dressing room listening to another Jones’ parable about the Rumanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, with her mind fixed on ‘getting it absolutely right’, was not for Ella. An instinctive player, Mark Ella did not need to think about getting it right. And perhaps there was something else. It could never have been easy for an Aboriginal player to feel completely comfortable in a game played predominantly by middle class whites, who were not always good at concealing their prejudice. Although Alan Jones gave no overt cause for it, Mark Ella just might have believed his coach was another racist bastard.
He was not the only one to see that this tour was not as much fun as previous ones. Stan Pilecki, even more the old school rugby tourist, thought Alan Jones had taken a risk investing all in victory. ‘There’s more to winning than winning … when you’re with Alan it’s football all the way. Like you’d sit down to dinner and you’d be talking tactics about the team that you’re playing next. Now you cop that for three months, it’s pretty hard.’52
Alan Jones’ idea of fun was when he was crouched at a small table with a favoured player. Ever generous, he was happy to pay the bill, and if there was a price to the players it tended to be that Alan did most of the talking. There were team trips to London shows as well, which many of the players enjoyed.
Obviously they also enjoyed winning. Despite a few whinges it had been a great tour, but it was not over. A final match against the Barbarians, players from a range of European teams, was set for 15 December. While normally a less serious match, northern hemisphere pride was on the line. A strong team, including some of France’s best, was selected with an eye to matching the individual talents of the Australians. More than two months into the tour, the Wallabies were a touch ragged when they arrived back in Wales. Their 37–30 win made it an even happier Christmas.
The Grand Slam series is and always will be special to Australian rugby aficionados. The Eighth Wallabies returned from the tour of the British Isles with an enhanced international reputation. As Jones put it: ‘That’s what changed the face of Australian rugby. We’re now a feared force in the game wherever the game is played in the world. And I hope that we played some small role in that.’53
While some of the players doubted the strength of the opposition, Nick Farr-Jones was the only one rash enough to say so publicly. When Jones read his debut halfback’s comment that ‘the tests weren’t hard enough’, he was on the telephone at 6 am. ‘How dare you try and belittle what was achieved over there by saying it was easy. Don’t you know that if you found it was easy it was only because of the tremendous amount of work we did?’54
Alan Jones’ belief in struggle and the unapologetic pursuit of victory had worked. He took the position that wearing the green and gold presupposed an obligation to win. He had an open suspicion that players in it for the fun were frightened of winning: ‘I have never understood how people can snatch a good time out of persistent failure and defeat’.55
The success of 1984 would lead to further opportunities, which would bring Alan Jones wealth as well as fame. His public identity was strengthened, but beneath the surface, if better concealed, the fragile self remained. There would be more success, but pressure, too, when concerns mounted about the reach of Alan’s motivation and the durability of that winning touch.