Eddie Jones appointment: Never mind the next World Cup, how do you like the tie?

Not long after Eddie Jones had been unveiled to the media as England’s new rugby head coach, there was an interview broadcast on BBC radio in which Tom Hanks was praising his fellow actor Mark Rylance’s ability to “inhabit the role” in the forthcoming movie Bridge of Spies. Quite how much Jones will need to suspend his own disbelief as he settles into the unexpected part of an Australian tasked with looking after a treasured branch of English sport remains to be seen.

Asked to predict that England will win the next World Cup in 2019, in front of 14 TV camera crews and 50 journalists in the members’ room halfway up Twickenham’s west stand, Jones whacked the curve ball into the upper circle with the alacrity to be expected of a coach of more than 20 years’ standing, and, in particular, one who has already lost one final of the global event, when he was in charge of his own country’s team, on home Aussie turf, in 2003. You may just remember the identity of the victors that November day in Sydney and this weekend it will be the 12th anniversary of Jonny, Johnno and all that. Jones’ appointment by the Rugby Football Union as the first foreigner to take charge of the England team was a plot twist he admitted he could have never have seen coming, back then.

“The tie looks good, don’t you think?” Jones quipped of his trip to the RFU costume department for a standard-issue, red RFU number, and he went on to give an Oscar-winning turn of toeing the party line on overseas players and hailing England’s tremendous young talent.

Outside on the pitch the Argentina team were going through their stretches in preparation for today’s match with the Barbarians as a reminder of the pain suffered by English supporters when the southern hemisphere took over the business end of the most recent World Cup.

Inside, among the supporting cast, the Union’s chief executive, Ian Ritchie, had last week signalled this appointment by saying the replacement for Stuart Lancaster – or simply “Lancaster” as Jones referred to him, in his slightly blunt, conversational manner – would need “proven international experience”.

It may be seen as a knee-jerk reaction to the previous incumbent’s homely CV. But what about Lancaster’s predecessors in the open era? Jack Rowell had done almost all his pre-England coaching at Bath; Clive Woodward coached fairly briefly at Henley, London Irish and Bath; Andy Robinson was another Bath man who had some time as Woodward’s England assistant. Only Brian Ashton, with his shortish stint as Ireland coach, had something more peripatetic to offer, while Martin Johnson after him had nothing like that at all.

Of course, each of those men possessed intellectual ability and lessons learnt from pre-coaching days. Woodward, for one, was greatly influenced by playing and working in Australia. But it does all emphasise the jump made now to Jones, with his 20-plus years of coaching club, Super Rugby and national teams in Australia, England, Japan and South Africa. The important reviews for the new leading man are still to come and they will stand or fall on results, as always.