Eddie Jones and England’s ‘head of entertainment’ Jamie George aiming to put smiles on faces

Eddie Jones has told his England squad to look at the positive examples of how teams can operate within a coronavirus bio-bubble, rather than the negative ones that have dominated the headlines throughout the last few months.

In particular, the England football team has been blighted by protocol breaches, with Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood sent home from last month’s trip to Iceland after bringing two women back to the team hotel, before Jadon Sancho, Tammy Abraham and Ben Chilwell were all dropped for Thursday’s victory over Wales after attending an illegal house party for the Chelsea striker.

The national cricket team has also been affected, with Jofra Archer dropped from the second Test against Pakistan in August after breaching their bio-secure bubble in between matches, while there have been a number of incidents abroad, particularly in Jones’s much-loved NRL in Australia.

Jones does not want to create a culture of fear this autumn, though, with the England head coach instead pointing out the successful examples as ones to follow in order to put “smiles on faces”, which has been his approach throughout the lockdown period. Aware of the positive impact that a winning England side can have on the public, Jones wants to see his players smiling their way to victory, and believes one NRL side in particular has shown them the road ahead.

“There is one team in Australia, Melbourne Storm, who have handled it particularly well,” said Jones. “They have had 13 weeks out of their homes sitting in Melbourne and haven’t missed a beat. They have performed with spirit and performed with talent almost every time.

“The English cricket side has done well so they have handled their situation very well. We have been looking at other teams and just trying to pick up bits and pieces. There have been a number of teams that have done things well and we have just tried to find out what the best ways to handle certain situations are. There will be a bit of experimentation because we don’t know how our players are going to handle it.

“I am anticipating the players will come in with a big smile on their faces and ready to go. Our job is to put a smile on people’s faces so it is a huge responsibility we have got and we want to do it in a good style and with a good attitude. If the players don’t want to be here they don’t have to be here. This is a choice that everyone makes, no one is forcing their hands and no one is telling them they have got to play for England – they haven’t got a contract to play for England. The guys who have come into camp have made the choice to come in so now we have got to do the business.”

The prospect of spending seven weeks within the England camp and cut off from the outside world is one that will test the mental strength of each and every player, as well as England’s slimmed-down backroom staff following the Rugby Football Union’s recent redundancies. But Jones has already been vocal in his desire to see the players take the lead in finding ways to keep themselves occupied, which for “self-nominated head of entertainment” Jamie George has already proved somewhat tricky.

“One of my main priorities is to make sure the social aspect of things keeps ticking along nicely and it presents a couple of different challenges, with not being able to leave the hotel and all the rest of it,” said the Saracens hooker.

“I have to get my creative hat on and work out what to do as the self-nominated head of entertainment. I have a few ideas but we have to adhere to social distancing, so even board-game night, which I was going to go with, means you have to sanitise the dice every time and so that makes it challenging and it takes a little while.

“We will have to think about how we can do stuff as a team, maybe different themes, food nights, movie nights and all the rest of it. I am looking forward to that challenge, too.”

George has benefited from his close ties to the England cricket side. The British and Irish Lions forward, who will win his 50th cap if he features against Italy at the end of the month, picked the brains of current squad members Sam Billings and Zak Crawley while they spent time out together on the golf course, and hopes that he will have picked up a few tips on how to cope mentally with living in such a restricted environment.

“I am intrigued,” he added. “Myself and Sam catch up quite a bit so it was like one of the other comments. I played golf with Zak Crawley relatively recently. It was good to have a conversation with him about his experiences, a newer player in the camp. Both were very interesting although no real chat around Jofra Archer.

“When we come into camp, Eddie lays out how he wants things to look. Whenever we are in camp, everything is always very player-driven and we have already had conversations with Owen [Farrell] and some of the other senior players about how we need to drive that.

“It's very important. If the younger guys, first time in the camp, see us being lax with the Covid rules they are going to follow suit. It's really important, but we have such strong team values that I'm pretty confident everyone will buy in and won't need to be driven too much. You realise that you have a responsibility when you are in the England environment that you are adhering to everything we want to do as a team.”