Eddie Jones turns to numbers game as he plots England's bold new future

Eddie Jones did not get where he is today by idly sitting around gazing at his navel. Perhaps the most telling line in his autobiography is the one where he outlines the basic trait every good coach needs to possess. ‘Curiosity is the heart of invention,’ he writes. ‘Whether you are talking to Pep Guardiola, Alex Ferguson or the person sitting next to you on the plane, you can always learn something.’

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Journalism, coincidentally, operates on a similar basis: what a top-notch, hard-bitten news reporter Jones might have made had he not opted for a different career path. At the age of 60 he remains restless for knowledge, not least in the area of player identification and selection in a rapidly changing game. Most recently his curiosity has been aroused by football, which he thinks is well ahead of rugby in certain regards.

Even while on corporate duty for Umbro, for example, he is all too aware the national team’s latest new shirt matters less than picking the right people to fill it. Jones still relies on his own seasoned eyes when it comes to attending matches and studying video footage but there is now a third leg to the selectorial stool: performance metrics and statistical-based analysis. “Certainly football are way ahead of us in this area which is one of the reasons we’ve spent some time looking at football,” reveals Jones, speaking on behalf of English rugby’s new official technical kit partner. “We have spoken to a few people from various organisations.”

Among them have been Red Bull’s growing sporting family, in which certain key attributes are identified and cloned in a variety of other locations. “Red Bull have got about four or five teams ... they have obviously set up quite an efficient football factory at the moment,” says Jones. “They have got Red Bull in New York, Red Bull in Austria, Red Bull in Germany and they use a central bank to collect the information to recruit players. They have done really well and been quite innovative, particularly in how they recruit players based on the information they collect. So we are going down that track.”

Given the Rugby Football Union is currently staring down the barrel of substantial revenue losses, it remains to be seen precisely how far this potential new relationship will go. No one needs to remind Jones – “We are dealing with that at the moment” – that funding cutting-edge research is expensive. Given England are also not a club team, with the freedom to sign any player they fancy, comparisons with rugby are not entirely linear.

Jones, though, is keen to identify new ways of extracting fresh nuggets from the dross. “Take Mako Vunipola, who is probably one of the best loose-heads in the world. He carries the ball 15 times a game. His longest carry is probably three seconds, so he has the ball in his hand for a total of 45 seconds. That means he is working off the ball for 79 minute and 15 seconds – and we don’t really have any metrics to measure the effectiveness of his movement off the ball. We have some very crass data on that but we are looking to see if there is any opportunity to collect more meaningful data. It is quite a big project and something we will keep investigating.”

The days of wheezing props trotting slowly from set-piece to set-piece are already long gone but this latest Big Brother vision of the future will still be enough to send a chill down the spine of every hefty tight forward out there. Suddenly it is no longer enough to scrummage your opposite number into the dirt and flatten everything within arm’s length. The new-age multi-skilled prop is already expected to tickle the ivories as well as shift a dozen pianos. Soon his coach will be demanding a whole 80-minute symphony.

But hold on. Statistics are clearly a useful tool but a player’s worth cannot be entirely measured in metres covered or rucks hit, as anyone who watched Wasps’ improbable win over Bath at the Rec will testify. Most impressive of all was the way Wasps mentally plotted their way out of a tight corner caused by the loss of four injured players, including both their specialist hookers, in the first half. If there was a quantifiable way – other than the final scoreline – to weigh up the contributions in adversity of Joe Launchbury, Dan Robson, Simon McIntyre, the Willis brothers and their young fly-half Jacob Umaga their respective readings would have been off the charts.

Is that not the ultimate definition of a ball player? Yes, they have to be fit, committed and busy but at the highest level an ability to think clearly and adapt smartly to situations counts for at least as much. If you were going to design the ultimate futuristic performance app it also needs to monitor the percentage of times that players, particularly in specialist roles, make correct decisions under pressure.

At Bath, for example, Robson might not have rated as highly for box-kick effectiveness or basic efficiency as Ben Spencer but there was no doubt about the more influential No 9 on the day. Should that not count significantly in the former’s favour England-wise? What about Launchbury’s captaincy and intangible example? Relying entirely on algorithms and robots to pick England’s best team may still be a way off.

* Eddie Jones is an Umbro ambassador. Umbro will be launching its new England Rugby kit on the 7th September. For more information visit: www.umbro.co.uk/rugby