Master motivator Alan Jones has point to prove with the Barbarians | Robert Kitson

Rare is the coach who not only wins but talks a world-class game, too. Eddie Jones is the modern prototype but three decades ago there was another Australian guru named Jones with an even sharper tongue. Alan Jones was in charge of the 1984 grand slam-winning Wallabies, one of the finest teams to tour these islands, and makes today’s front men sound like quiet suburban accountants.

Not so long ago Jones suggested the best thing Australia’s then coach, Robbie Deans, could do to assist the national side was to shut up and stay at home in bed. He has been equally scathing about the head honchos at the Australian Rugby Union from the pulpit of his Sydney radio talkback show, although a serious health scare in June did briefly remove him from the airwaves. Jones, now 76, spent a week in intensive care being treated for septicaemia, an experience which left him “feeling like I’ve gone 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali”.

All of which makes his return to top-level rugby coaching after a 30-year hiatus gloriously intriguing. Jones is in charge of the Barbarians squad facing Australia in Sydney on Saturday, with a warm-up game against a Classic Wallabies XV in Lismore ending in a 27-24 victory as a midweek aperitif. It has long been Jones’s contention that modern teams are over-coached, over-staffed, over-reliant on structure – basically, over everything. Suddenly he has another high-profile chance to put his coaching reputation where his motor mouth is.

Even Sir Clive Woodward presiding over a Barbarians side trying to beat New Zealand at Twickenham this autumn would not involve firing up the Tardis to this extent. The game has altered so radically since Jones last coached Australia in 1987 as to be barely recognisable. The days of rucking bodies on the floor, four points for a try and plates of half-time orange segments feel pre-historic now, not to mention the quaint notions of playing for free, reporting back to the day job on a Monday morning or covering streakers’ private parts with police helmets.

Jones, though, is intent on proving track-suited “dinosaurs” can still rule the earth and make turnstiles click again. According to those who know him best, he will be particularly keen to demonstrate that supposedly outdated backline coaching tenets continue to be relevant and, like retro vinyl, are ripe for revival.

Mark Ella, the kingpin of the stellar 1984 Australia backline, predicts, for example, that Jones will encourage his captain Quade Cooper to employ a pre-professional attacking style: “I think he will instruct his three-quarters to stand closer and flatter,” wrote Ella in The Australian. “It will require attention to detail in the small time available to master the lost art of ball-in-hand rugby but let’s hope it cuts a stark contrast to the current crap players are trying to execute.”

Australia’s current squad, having beaten New Zealand at the weekend, can justifiably claim not everything has gone to the dingos. The return of Kurtley Beale, hailed by Jones as the best player in any of Australia’s footballing codes, is also helping boost on-field expectations. But Jones’s comeback still generates a broader question: are he and his fellow old-timers right to object that today’s professional coaching is too prescriptive and fails to trust players’ intuition and wit sufficiently? Some of the criticism directed at the Lions coach, Warren Gatland, by Sean O’Brien came from a very similar place.

The contrasting pair of Austin Healey and Brian Ashton have also stressed recently that the best coaches empower players to make the key on-field decisions. “I wouldn’t say I was a better player for the coaches’ input on either of my Lions tours, certainly not in 2001,” suggested Healey, putting himself forward to coach the next Lions tour in 2021. “All the coaches did was piss us off. What I learned from Graham Henry was that I don’t like Graham Henry. Honestly, you could pick me as the Lions coach and I would probably do as good a job, if not better, provided you have the right squad.”

This is not entirely about Austin being Austin. One 2017 Test Lion privately confided the other day that Gatland spoke to him only twice in the whole six weeks on tour in New Zealand. It is equally possible, however, that the dazzling Jones rhetoric which held a dressing room enthralled in 1984 will be laughed out of town in 2017 by Generation Y players more comfortable sitting down and studying clips supplied by their battalions of video analysts.

Should Australia hammer Jones’s Barbarians by 50 points at Allianz Stadium, the latter argument will inevitably gain ground. The Wallabies coach, Michael Cheika, will certainly be hoping so, having already accepted he would be mad to try any pre-match mind games with his older predecessor: “I’ll get smashed by Alan – he’s got a national platform to play mind games on a daily basis, so I’ll never win that battle.”

While the best coaches tend to be good selectors, man managers and shrewd delegators, lateral thinkers and bold showmen are always welcome. Jones once ticked all those boxes with aplomb but that was then. This week will reveal if the master motivator can still cut it.

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

It takes some doing to turn a ground-breaking week for gender equality in Irish rugby into the precise opposite. Joy Neville’s appointment as the first female assistant referee in the European Champions’ Cup – she will also be taking charge of this weekend’s men’s international between Norway and Denmark – remains a positive development but the IRFU’s decision last week to advertise it’s national XV women’s head coach role as a “casual” role for a six month period – having just hosted a highly successful women’s World Cup – has provoked uproar. “Insulting” and “naive” have been two of the kinder responses from current internationals who cannot publicly reveal their identities for fear of losing their international places. Talk about mixed messages. Women’s rugby in the year 2017 deserves better.

ONE TO WATCH

The best “nearly” result of the season was Treviso’s agonising 30-29 defeat at home to star-studded Toulon, courtesy of a wobbly late penalty from Francois Trinh Duc. On Saturday they host Edinburgh, a team beset by off-field distractions, in the Pro14. Win and the sense of growing belief within Italian rugby will further intensify.