Eddie Piaf: No regrets for Jones after infamous press conference

The Wallabies have settled into training camp in the city of Saint-Etienne ahead of their first pool game against Georgia and Eddie Jones is channelling a little piece of French singer Edith Piaf.

Just like the Frenchwoman’s most famous song Non, je ne regrette rien (No, I don’t regret anything), he doesn’t feel contrite after his now-infamous press conference at Sydney Airport departing for the World Cup. In fact, after speaking to journalists he says fell straight asleep on the plane.

Speaking to 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Thursday morning, Jones was jokingly asked whether he wanted to apologise to anyone for his forthright press conference.

“Probably not mate, we’ve obviously had a disappointing lead-up to the World Cup, but we’re here now, we’ve got a good young team with a new captain in Will Skelton and we’re ready to go.”

Asked how he felt in the immediate aftermath of the testy press conference, Jones again wasn’t in the mood for introspection.

“I fell asleep straight away,” he said. “I never have any regrets mate. You know, I try to just be as honest as I can be with my feelings and emotions and that’s how I felt at that time.”

The Wallabies will face a Georgian team in Saint-Etienne desperate to showcase their world-class pack and Jones believes that his captain Will Skelton’s leadership and experience will provide the team with the perfect platform to perform.

“He’s a big man and he’s been a winner in Europe,” Jones said. “He’s won at Saracens and won at La Rochelle and he brings people together and when you’ve got a young squad and particularly quite a diverse squad. We’ve got a big mix of players, we need someone who’s got the skills available to be able to bring people together and he’s got that.”

The Wallabies’ last warm-up game against France was a comprehensive 41-17 defeat in Paris, but Jones believes that the game against one of the World Cup favourites still provided many positives ahead of the pool stages.

“It’s really interesting against France,” he said. “Our best moments were better than France, but our worst moments are far worse than France and it’s all about consistency and keep doing the simple things well, and at the moment, we don’t have the capacity to do that, but we’re slowly building.

“We’ve just got to be more consistent and that comes from a bit of mental toughness, that comes from the team fighting together in difficult situations. It also comes from our capacity to repeat skills under pressure and training is our avenue to improve. I can tell you we’re training at the absolute optimum we can and we’ll get to the World Cup and we’ll be in great condition.”

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