Pressure is growing on Rugby Australia to sack Eddie Jones before he jumps to put an end to a shambolic period as speculation continues about his links to Japan.
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Several Japan media outlets are reporting Jones is on the verge of being unveiled as the country's new coach despite his denials of an interview before the World Cup began.
The story line is a sad post script to a disastrous World Cup campaign, which ended when the Wallabies were knocked out before the quarter finals for the first time in the tournament's history.
Assistant coach Pierre-Henry Broncan added fuel to the fire when he claimed Australian-based players weren't fit enough and that it would be hard for Jones to remain unless there was major change.
Rugby Australia is pushing its centralisation model as the answer to all rugby's woes. The ACT and Queensland have agreed to high performance alignment, but have rejected other aspects.
![Eddie Jones, centre, has been continually linked to job in Japan. Eddie Jones, centre, has been continually linked to job in Japan.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/j2iwCiKfwhVWJky39Vsdpt/6eae4b9e-eb1b-420c-8c27-2e5abb2ee516.png/r0_0_1200_675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"There's no time to lose," Broncan told French sports newspaper L'Equipe. "The French had four years to build a group. They have been preparing for this World Cup for four years. Australia must take a cue from this."
"Eddie is a competitor. If he doesn't have the means or if he feels that things will continue as before, it will be hard for him to stay.
"If he senses a real desire from Rugby Australia to create a high-performance environment, I think he will be there."
Broncan, the former coach of Top 14 club Castres, worked under Eddie Jones in preparing the young squad, who lost two of their four matches as Australia crashed out in the pool stage for the first time.
"The team's youth did not work at this World Cup, it did not lack experience but collective experience," he said.
"We saw the players who play in France, Will Skelton and Richie Arnold, had a much greater work ethic than the players who are in Australia.
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"They are not used to working under pressure, to maintaining precision and concentration. They are used to working at high intensity, that's not the problem, but it's the precision that's lacking. Tactically too, there are very few tacticians."
Broncan, echoing Jones, said the loss of Skelton and prop Taniela Tupou to injuries in one week before the defeat by Fiji had been a hammer blow.
"We lost the World Cup the week we lost Tupou and Skelton. Our scrum and pack were much worse without them," he said. "These two players were not replaced by players of the same quality. If at least one of them had been there, I think we would have beaten Fiji."
"These two players were not replaced by players of the same quality. If at least one of them had been there, I think we would have beaten Fiji."
The experienced Frenchman thought the training of the pair had been mishandled and that Jones's experiment of bringing in assistant coaches from rugby league and Australian rules had not worked.
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