Eddie Jones Has Begun His Mind Games With Wales Ahead Of Six Nations Clash

We knew this was coming.

Eddie Jones is a master at mind games. The Australian knows exactly what to say and does an excellent job of making sure the spotlight is on him as opposed to his players in the build up to England’s big games.

It’s an excellent tactic as it lets the players stick to what their good at and that’s play rugby. In the build up to England’s massive clash with rivals Wales at the Principality this weekend, Jones has done it again.

Jones says he cannot understand why England have won only 40% of their championship games on Welsh soil and wants to improve that “horrendous” ratio at the Principality Stadium. He says Wales are only a country of 3 millions people and can’t understand what the big deal is.

“I can’t work out why the record of England in Wales is so poor,” said Jones

I’m sure they have [had good teams in the past] but they are a country of three million people. There seems to be some sort of thing there.

“No one can tell me why the English are petrified of playing Wales in Wales. I will talk to a few blokes to figure out what the problem is and why the record is so horrendous, because it is horrendous.”

As for the possibility of the roof being closed, Jones had this to say:

“I don’t care. They can have fireworks going off, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same for both teams. The louder and more rowdy, the better it is. Those are the games you want to win. Are they closing [the roof]? We’ll toss a coin and see what happens.

“You have to be able to cope with it. What happens in a World Cup final if you don’t like the atmosphere? That is what Test rugby is about and that is the fun part of it. We have to find a way to overcome that. But it is not going to be overcome by repeating history. We will work out what has been done in the past and make sure we don’t do it.

I have a solution for it but I am not prepared to share it with you.

Classic Eddie Jones. Will his mind games work? We’ll find out this weekend.