Felix Jones – the defence coach forged in Munster, South Africa and ancient Greece

When you speak to Felix Jones’s former coaches and team-mates, it is clear that England’s new defence coach squeezed every last drop of potential out of himself as a player.

“I think Felix would be the first one to say that he didn’t have the most rounded of skillsets,” Rob Penney, his coach at Munster, told Telegraph Sport. “What he lacked in some of that aspect, he made up for in his energy, passion and work rate, which was unquestionable.”

It is a well-worn trope of the player who lacked raw talent but outperformed their contemporaries because of their work ethic and ability to box clever. Jones possessed both that single-minded determination and razor-sharp intellect necessary to overcome any obstacle put in his path.

Yet there is no happy ending to this particular fairytale as Jones’s playing career was punctuated by a series of devastating injuries. He won 13 caps for Ireland as well as the Magners League with Munster in 2011 but twice missed out on selection to the World Cup and was forced to retire aged just 28.

Yet where one door closes, another opens and what slipped from Jones’s grasp as a player he has more than grabbed as a coach. You can probably count on one hand the number of coaches to have a couple of World Cups on their CVs by the age of 36, but few of his contemporaries are surprised by the speed of his ascent.

Jerry Flannery, his former Munster team-mate and Ireland hooker whom he will succeed as Springboks defence coach, says what marked Jones out from the start of his career was his brains and his determination to plough his own furrow. For his classics degree at University College Dublin, he wrote a 10,000-word thesis on Greek columns. He subsequently took a Masters degree in sports psychology.

Perhaps even more impressively as a born and bred Dubliner, he recognised that he would struggle to break through at Leinster so he crossed Irish rugby’s great divide by moving to Munster. “That shows his strength of character,” Flannery said. “Not many players take that step, but he settled in straight away.”

Feared he would not walk again

The move to Munster is where the what-could-have-been narrative begins. In just his sixth game for Munster, Jones dipped his head into a tackle. “All I thought was, ‘right, contact here, duck down [brace yourself]’, but next thing I heard a crunch,” Jones told the Irish Examiner. “I thought to myself, ‘oh Jesus, that’s not good.’” He was later told that he had dislocated cervical vertebrae. In layman’s terms he had broken his neck. He feared he would never walk again and was told categorically that his playing career was over.

But following a gruelling rehabilitation process, he did play again. Four games into his comeback, he snapped his cruciate, which spelt another six months on the sidelines. He came back midway through the 2010/11 season helping Munster win the Magners League. He was called up to Ireland’s World Cup training squad, making a highly impressive first start against France when he went up for a high ball and heard another crunch. This time it was his foot.

“He had played phenomenally well in those warm-up games and had a good chance of starting in the World Cup but then he got a really bad lisfranc [foot injury],” Flannery said. “I had worked with him and saw how hard he worked to get back. It was devastating. I was gutted for him, particularly when he put himself in such a phenomenal position. Sport can be so cruel.”

During this particular lay-off, Jones started performing in his team-mate Barry Murphy’s band, Hermitage Green, playing the bodhrán, a frame drum. Again Jones worked his way back to full fitness, only to suffer a shoulder injury in the PRO12 semi-final loss to the Ospreys that ruled him out of New Zealand’s tour to Ireland.

“People say, ‘it’s taken great character to do what you’ve done’, but I don’t think so,” Jones told the Examiner. “When you’ve only one option, what other option are you going to take?” So on he ploughed, again making the 2015 World Cup training squad but this time missing out through selection. However another serious neck injury spelled retirement shortly thereafter.

‘The best players don’t make the best coaches’

Penney, now head coach of the Crusaders, had left Munster shortly before Jones’ retirement but had already identified him as a future coach and remains a close confidant. “Felix probably reached his threshold as a player,” Penney said. “Often what happens with players like Felix who didn’t quite have the ability to push on to the very top level is that they work out a way to become the best player they can be. So their depth of understanding of the game and why they are able to do what they can do and how they can contribute adds value to their level of understanding as a coach.

“Sometimes the best players don’t understand why they do what they do and they find it frustrating to try to coach others because they are not capable of passing those lessons on. It is teaching the skill to someone that is developing, if you do not have the depth of understanding of how you did it as a player and how you overcame obstacles. Felix had all that because he had to in order to compete at the top level.”

That transition began almost straight away as he was folded into the coaching staff at Munster under Anthony Foley and then future Springboks boss Rassie Erasmus while he was seconded into Ireland’s set-up under Joe Schmidt while still in his 20s. “There’s not many industries where you go in at the top level straight away, but it is also a massive challenge,” Flannery said. “To go in and coach your peers, guys like Peter O’Mahony, when he must have been 29 is bananas. That’s incredibly hard. I found it hard enough to do when I was 35. I think what Felix did at Munster was just as impressive as winning World Cups.”

Both Flannery and Penney are convinced that Jones’ upward trajectory will only continue with England. “It has been awesome to watch him from afar win a couple of World Cups,” Penney said. “He is committed heart and soul to anything he does and am sure he will bring that intensity to England.”

Flannery concurs. “His breadth and depth of knowledge across the game is almost unparalleled,” Flannery said. “England’s players are in for a challenge but he will make them better players.”