The reason why Eddie Jones believes Andy Farrell will ‘end up getting sacked’ by Ireland
Eddie Jones, inset, has predicted the reason why Andy Farrell will eventually lose his Ireland job
Eddie Jones has predicted the exact reason why Andy Farrell will eventually lose his job as the Ireland head coach.
Back in charge of the Irish following his successful series-winning sabbatical in charge of the British & Irish Lions in Australia, Farrell is currently in Chicago plotting how to take the scalp of Scott Robertson’s All Blacks on November 1.
He flew across the Atlantic having taken a fair amount of criticism for announcing an Ireland squad containing 21 Leinster players and just four from Munster just days before Munster walloped the arch rivals at Croke Park in the United Rugby Championship.
Despite being contracted to the Ireland job through to the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia, Farrell’s eventual exit from the role has been touched on by ex-England boss Jones, whose Japan team will play Ireland in Dublin on November 8.
“It’s so true mate…”
Jones is part of a stellar cast of rugby people who have contributed to a fascinating new book on Irish rugby. Written by Brendan Fanning, Touching Distance – Irish Rugby’s Battle with Great Expectations reflects on the past 20 years of the sport in Ireland.
Included in the in-depth review is a forensic look at how things fell apart for Joe Schmidt towards the end of his time in charge of Ireland in 2019, paving the way for Farrell, his then assistant, to take charge.
Ireland were battered in Schmidt’s final match, a horrible Rugby World Cup quarter-final trouncing versus the All Blacks in Japan.
And Jones, who was the England coach that toppled the All Blacks the following week in the semi-finals, has now explained in the book how he understood why Schmidt was so resistant to changing the approach that had made Ireland look very good before 2019.
“The book that resonates in my head as you speak is the one written by Carlo Ancelotti – Quiet Leadership,” Jones said to Fanning. “He says that whatever you’re good at is what gets you the job, and you invariably get sacked for that same thing.
“And I reckon it’s so true mate. Joe brought detail, he brought precision, he brought a hard work ethic with players working above and beyond what they would normally do. And like everything, it runs its race.
“For me, and I know publicly his image has been tarnished, but you look at what he did for Ireland rugby and the state he left it in. Now, Andy comes in and he’s a bit freer and he’ll end up getting sacked for that mate. I’m telling you.
“You can maybe see signs of Ireland getting a bit loose now (November 2024), looking from afar, that it’s just a little bit too loose now the way they’re playing. I can understand absolutely what Joe was saying and what Joe did.”
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Farrell bounced back from that All Blacks loss to guide Ireland to wins over Argentina, Fiji and Australia. After he exited to scout for his Lions squad, Simon Easterby became interim head coach for the 2025 Six Nations that ended with a third-place finish.
That sabbatical means that next week’s match against New Zealand in America will be Farrell’s first game in charge since November 2024, and there will be a sharp focus on how Ireland perform given that several of the Leinster players he took with him on the Lions have endured a slow start to the new season.
Another revelation in Fanning’s book is Schmidt’s confession that he arrived at the World Cup in Japan and realised that he didn’t want to be there at all. “I had a very sick mother – she died just before that World Cup,” he said.
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“I have got to say I walked into my room at the start of the World Cup and thought I just do not want to be here. Now, I’d never been like that with a team before. I’d loved my time with the team. When it gets to that stage you know it’s not the right place to be, but you’re committed to doing a job and you’re trying your best to do it.
“Sometimes your best isn’t good enough, and for those people who spoke out afterwards that I wasn’t good enough for them. They didn’t feel like they could be as good as they could be, although some of those people who have been quoted have said other things to me (personally).
“I’d flown back to New Zealand three times in the three months before that World Cup, trying to spend a little bit of time with my mother, and always feeling the pressure to get back and keep working. So it just wasn’t ideal.
“And maybe some of that tension was part of… it wouldn’t have helped. When you stop enjoying something like coaching, that’s probably not a great situation to be in.”
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