The longer Australian rugby fixates on Eddie Jones, the further it will find itself from solutions.

Yes, Eddie’s tenure was a monumental failure. Yes, the 2023 Rugby World Cup was our worst ever. Yes, Jones got much more wrong than right.

Yet, this writer can’t help but feel there is a little revisionist history going on, that too many are attracted to an almost unchallenged narrative where demonizing Jones is the only ‘truth’.

After all, it’s comforting. With Eddie gone, things should get better shouldn’t they?

The reality is that Jones was akin to the grumpy old uncle who sat through one too many family implosions at Christmas Lunch and flipped his lid. Went a little mad.

The lunch disintegrated quicker than it otherwise would have but make no mistake, there was always going to be a blow up.

The way Jones is spoken about though, you would think that he was the only cause or even the main cause of Carter Gordon’s defection to league, of the Rooster raid that got Mark Nawaqanitawase. Of just about everything wrong with rugby.

Matt To’omua commented on the Roar Rugby Podcast: “We start looking at Eddie Jones and he wanted to go there and maybe give guys an experience and say, ‘In four years, they’re going to be better for it.’

“Well, no. Having a bad experience at a World Cup is not going to help you in any way, shape, or form. If anything, it will just give you so many more demons.

“I feel like we’re seeing that with Marky Mark [Nawaqanitawase] leaving and now Carter leaving, these are guys who Eddie might have said, ‘Yep, they’re going to benefit from getting this time in France at a World Cup,’ but clearly that hasn’t been the case.”

All that is probably true. World Cups are no place for novice youngsters to start at fly-half or to experiment with new game plans.

That said, if Carter Gordon is quitting the game because of a bad RWC that 30 other players went through, he was never going to make it anyway.

The truth is, the brand was on the ropes, the game was imploding, the next generation was turning away long before Jones replaced Dave Rennie.

Rugby needs to grapple with a series of important problems which raise equally important questions that go well beyond Eddie Jones’ lid flip.

Jones wasn’t responsible for the disgraceful dethroning of Ewen McKenzie, arguably the inflection point for Australian Rugby’s coaching tree.

The intellectual property and coaching continuity that was lost in that coup, not to mention the damage to sporting integrity was catastrophic for long term succession planning.

It certainly didn’t result in any kind of coaching initiative or skills program that every man and his dog can see is needed but never arrives.

Eddie didn’t decide to turn down Twiggy’s millions, cull the Force and then sign off the Rebels’ company accounts for half a decade did he?

Blame for those monumental screw ups can be attributed to some of Australia’s ‘finest’ business people as well as a handful of past players, some of whom are regarded as Rugby royalty to this day. Never a bad word is uttered about them curiously.

And what about Super Rugby? Over the past two decades attendances in New Zealand have plummeted by around 40%. Those in Australia by over 50%. All while generally the reverse is true of the Top 14 and English Premiership.

Crowd attendances in the NRL are up over the same period. Significantly, the Warriors attracted an average of 16,621 to their games in 2003 but averaged over 21,000 two decades later.

Maybe Eddie’s leaguie assistant, as well as arranging Carter Gordon’s defection, also conspired with New Zealand Rugby League in a covert operation over two decades to undermine the All Blacks?

Please. Heads. In. Sand.

The loss of market share shown by decreasing crowd figures alludes to one of the biggest elephants in the room. One that Eddie Jones sure isn’t responsible for but has spoken about recently.

Like children turned away from cricket in the West Indies in the 1990s, families are turning away from the rugby product in New Zealand and most definitely in Australia. That can only mean the general public finds rugby a lesser product, entertainment-wise, than the alternatives.

While we hear people say ‘it doesn’t matter how the game is played, let there be scrum resets’, kids will increasingly look to league, soccer and basketball, just as they did in the Windies three decades ago. Cricket there has never recovered.

The parallels are stark, the Windies of the 80s were the cricketing equivalents of the Wallabies of the 90s and McCaw’s All Blacks. Complacency set in after long periods of on-field success.

Whereas cricket in the Windies had the Chicago Bulls to contend with, Rugby in Australia has three football codes that are all better administered to contend with.

Les Kiss arrived at Queensland and recognised that how you win and lose is important. He jammed his side full of kids and tried to instill confidence to move the ball, play what was in front of them.

He followed Jones’ principles in a way, he was just better at it. Along with instinctive running rugby, giving youth a chance, he has seen fit to play with structure. To rotate youngsters. Kiss was never going to play the mad uncle role.

Australian rugby needs to move away from its unhealthy obsession with Eddie and spurn the easy route of blaming him for all its ills.

Why is there no apparent skills program or coaching tree after all these years?

How did we allow the corporate catastrophe at the Rebels?

When will we innovate domestically to make the sport more attractive to the next generation?

If Rugby in Australia doesn’t grapple with the hard questions, don’t expect Joe Schmidt or the next guy to work miracles.

And don’t think blaming Eddie in 10 years time for the games annihilation will wash either.