Eddie Jones happy to be proven wrong as he bids farewell to former England captain Chris Robshaw

Ahead of what will be Chris Robshaw’s international swansong, Eddie Jones paid a glowing tribute to the man who proved him wrong after helping to re-establish England’s position towards the top of the game.

Jones was at the helm as England finished last year’s Rugby World Cup as runners-up following defeat in the final against South Africa, a loss that resulted in him extending his stay with the national team until France 2023 in the hope of ending the country’s wait for a second World Cup triumph.

But the journey started some four years before that painful defeat in 2019 when Jones took the decision to strip Robshaw of the England captaincy. The flanker had been a mainstay of the England team under Stuart Lancaster, who trusted him to lead England into a new era post-Martin Johnson despite having won just one solitary cap before being installed as skipper.

Robshaw led England to four consecutive runner-up finishes in the Six Nations between 2012 and 2015, before the humiliating defeat at their home World Cup put paid to Lancaster’s time in charge and, following Jones’s appointment, Robshaw’s captaincy as the Australian put his faith into Dylan Hartley instead. It followed critical comments that Jones made about Robshaw during the tournament while still Japan head coach, with the former Wallabies side predicting that Australia would be able to dominate England thanks to their back-row superiority.

“To me, Robshaw is an outstanding club player, but at international level he just doesn’t have that point of difference,” Jones wrote in his column for the Daily Mail. “He carries ok, he tackles ok, but he’s not outstandingly good in any area. I think that is his limiting factor. He’s a good workmanlike player, but he does not have the specialist skills and the instinct as an openside that (David) Pocock has.”

Jones was right in that Australia would dominate England that day, but it transpired that Robshaw had the character to prove the rest of his comments wrong. Robshaw started Jones’s first game in charge, the first of 12 consecutive victories with the Harlequins forward in the starting XV, as England went on a record-equalling run of 18 games unbeaten.

His final international appearance came more than two years ago on the summer tour of South Africa, where Tom Curry’s rise to prominence followed the emergence of Sam Underhill to all but end his six-year run in the national team. But with Robshaw set to make one last appearance on the international stage, albeit against his country as he skippers the famous Barbarians this Sunday, Jones is happy to hold his hands up and say that Robshaw proved him wrong.

“He’s an outstanding guy,” admits Jones. “I made the tough decision that he was not to continue as captain and when you take something away, like the national team captaincy, from a player it is a difficult time.

“His response was, ‘right, I am going to be the best six or seven or whatever you need’ and we had a good discussion on what we felt we could maximise in his game. He went about doing that and he was absolutely brilliant for us.

“There was a difficult time in English rugby. Being knocked out of the World Cup pool without making the play-offs in your home World Cup, that’s a difficult time, and he was one of the guys who helped uplift England back to where it should be in world rugby. We had that run of 18 games I think it was and he was one of the foundation members of that team, guys like him and Haskell and Dylan Hartley, they can all be proud of what they did for English rugby.

“And Chris continues to be an outstanding player for Quins. I remember watching him play against Bristol, I think, it was a wet day and he was by far the best player on the field. So he still continues to give his best and our job on Sunday is to make sure he doesn’t have a great game.”

Robshaw expressed his pride in winning Jones round to maintain his international aspirations after playing in his final match for Harlequins last month. The 34-year-old is set to move to the United States to play for San Diego Legion in what is a growing Major League Rugby, but not before he graces Twickenham one last time.

But while he is proud of his own doing in winning Jones over, he is also thankful to him for giving him a new lease of life without the England captaincy - a reign that he admitted had been dying “a bit of a slow death” that left him feeling “suffocated” before the 2015 World Cup failure, and “blank behind the eyes” after it.

“Look, you carry those things around for a long time and I am sure at the back of his mind it’s still there,” Jones said.

“When you have had a tough defeat or a tough personal experience like that, you have always got that hanging around somewhere. But it’s your ability to put that to the side and then to focus on what you can do in the future, and he’s been able to do that. If you look at his career after that 2015 World Cup he has played wonderfully well for England, continued to be one of the best players for Harlequins and he is a fine testament to what the English rugby game can produce.”

While there will be a familiarity for Robshaw on Sunday, there is nothing normal about the match. Robshaw will be playing wrapping up his international career against the side he captained for the majority of his career, alongside many he regarded as rivals as 11 Saracens players join him in the Barbarians side. It will also be the first time that he will lead out a side into an empty Twickenham Stadium.

But at least there will be one person in attendance as he emerges from the tunnel who knows exactly what Robshaw has given to the English game.

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