‘It wasn’t pretty’: Why Eddie won’t watch new Wallabies documentary

Wallabies star Allan Alaalatoa says some players still feel “anger” towards Eddie Jones for the chaotic events of 2023, in which the now-departed coach scuttled the side’s chances of success at the World Cup by pushing through what they believed were too many changes.

The veteran Brumbies prop’s strong comments came before the release of a Wallabies documentary on Stan, based on hundreds of hours of fly-on-the-wall footage captured throughout the tumultuous year of Jones’ second stint as the national side’s coach.

The three-episode series, which will air on February 22, follows Jones and the Wallabies as they build towards the World Cup in France. With rare access to dressing rooms, coaches meetings and rolling interviews with players, it captures the “nightmare” campaign, which ended in a historic pool stage exit.

Rugby Australia officials have been keen to move past the Jones saga but worked together with Australian television production company CJZ and Karlinberg Entertainment to put the documentary together.

“You can imagine the hell that management at Rugby Australia were going through while the whole thing was melting down,” Matt Campbell, executive producer and group chief executive of CJZ, told this masthead.

“It wasn’t pretty, but they weren’t worried about how it was going to be portrayed. They were extremely supportive of it. There were some people who weren’t joyous about it – there was a protectiveness about it – but that’s understandable.

The Wallabies had a World Cup to forget in France.

“No one was expecting the nightmare that it turned into. People like disasters. There’s a lot of people – not just rugby fans – who will be fascinated to see what went on behind closed doors.”

The series contains private interactions between Jones and players during the year, including a training field conversation between the coach and James Slipper after the 40-6 loss to Wales in Lyon where the coach bemoans the lack of “hardness” in Australian players.

Another enlightening scene shows Jones discussing his plan with the coaching staff to keep Will Skelton’s serious injury from getting out before the Wales game.

The furore around Jones’ interview with the Japan Rugby Football Union, as reported by this masthead during the World Cup, is covered as it breaks, but the documentary ends after the tournament and before he resigns to return to Japan as coach.

Alaalatoa said players were excited for fans to get an insight into the Wallabies’ inner sanctum. Speaking in a Stan promotional event, however, he said the players had mixed emotions about Jones.

“There are some guys who are frustrated with how it all played out and how he went about things,” Alaalatoa said.

“There is probably a bit of anger there as well. There are also boys who are grateful. He took a punt on a lot of young lads, who at the beginning of the year thought they were no chance of playing in the Wallabies. There is definitely a mixed range of emotions.”

Jones admits in the documentary he gambled by taking a young squad to the World Cup. It was the youngest and most inexperienced Wallabies squad ever sent to the tournament, and the coach also threw out the side’s playbook and attempted to bring in an unstructured style.

“When you think about it all, when you reflect and review from the year … I think there probably was too much change and, as players, we probably couldn’t keep up,” Alaalatoa said.

“Probably we weren’t on the same page with the way we wanted to play, and it took us too many games to try and get an understanding of that. Just looking from the review point of view and from the outside, there was probably too much change in a short period of time.”

Jones was consulted throughout the process and ultimately granted filmmakers access to the Wallabies’ inner sanctum, but he did not have veto power on the final cut.

He has no plans to watch it, however. Asked what he expected in the documentary on The London Telegraph Rugby Podcast, Jones said: “I’ve got no idea and don’t really care mate. That’s all history now.

“I’ve moved on. If you keep looking back over your shoulder and keep wanting to go back or escape from what it was, it doesn’t treat you at all well in what you’re doing. I don’t want to look back now.”

Campbell said the documentary kept a deliberate focus on players, despite all the headlines about Jones.

“We’re not doing a Four Corners episode on the Eddie Jones saga. We’re telling the story of the Wallabies’ World Cup campaign leading into and up to the World Cup,” Campbell said.

“We certainly did not expect this. We had to change our spiel. It was the worst Wallabies campaign in history and we were there to capture every moment. It’s completely different to what we hoped for. We hoped they would ‘snatch and grab’ and bring the cup home, but that’s not how it turned out.”

All three episodes of the brand new Stan Original Documentary Series The Wallabies – Inside Rugby World Cup 2023 premiere February 22, only on Stan.

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