England head coach Eddie Jones was a special guest at a packed Sudbury Rugby Club on Friday night and gave the club’s first team squad a special training session.
The Australian, who guided England to the 6-Nations title earlier in the year, led the training session as a gesture of thanks to Sudbury head coach, Ben Scully, who recently completed a one-year internship working with Jones and England.
After putting the players through their paces, ahead of their final London 1 North game at home to Saffron Walden on Saturday, Jones signed autographs and posed for photos with several eager children and adults who had watched his training session with interest.
“The boys were excellent, really good and I was really impressed with them,” said Jones, on his time with the first-team squad.
“We did some little unstructured games, about the transition of going from attack to defence and defence to attack, which is an enormously important part of the game.
“I love the game and coaching is the next best thing to playing, now I am too old to play.
“It is also nice to see all the young kids here too, wanting to play rugby.
“It (Sudbury) is a very impressive small club that has good dressing rooms and a good pavilion. So many people have attended tonight so it’s clear to see the game is in a healthy condition both nationally and here in Sudbury.”
Scully, who has recently become head coach of the Norway national team – a role that will run alongside his duties at Sudbury – was also in attendance and received some warm praise from Jones.
“Ben’s full-time job is with the RFU (Community coach in Essex) and worked with us on an internship,” Jones added.
“He helped us organise training sessions and did a lot of the work behind the scenes – he is an absolute inspiration to us and a good young fellow.”
Jones’ visit is likely to prove an inspiration too, hundreds of children wanting to get a glimpse of the England coach in west Suffolk.
“It’s great fun doing visits like this, the only hard thing was getting here. The traffic, goodness me, you need some more roads in Suffolk,” he joked.
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