England rugby coach Eddie Jones has revealed he was targeted by aggressive Scottish fans following last Saturday’s Calcutta match in which his side were beaten 25-13.
The trouble began on Sunday morning as Jones travelled by train from Edinburgh to Manchester. The Independent describes how the Australian was “physically and verbally abused” by Scots who, like Jones, were heading to Manchester to watch United play Chelsea in the Premier League.
Travelling alone in standard class, Jones was subjected to sustained abuse that left him fearful for his safety.
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“I’m a human being,” said Jones. “I don’t consider myself any different from anyone else, so for me to travel on public transport I thought was OK. But I’ll make sure I won’t in future. It’s as simple as that.
“I can’t because it was shown on Sunday what happens when I do. That’s the world we live in. I was massively surprised. It wasn’t comfortable.”
Jones tried to make light of the incident, saying that “as an Australian coaching England, there were always going to be challenges and that’s just one of them”, but he was clearly shaken, not just by the abuse on the train but by what happened once he arrived in Manchester.
According to the Daily Mail, at Manchester Piccadilly station “Jones was met by a car and driver arranged by United, but he was surrounded by Scotland supporters”.
Subjected to what the paper described as “foul-mouthed abuse”, the England coach had to be locked in the car as at least one fan tried to gain access to the vehicle.
Jones had been invited to Old Trafford as a guest of former United manager Alex Ferguson, himself a Scot and one of the few who displayed any courtesy to the Australian over the Calcutta Cup weekend.
The Mail says that Jones was “alarmed by inflammatory comments” made by Gavin Hastings, the former Scotland captain, who in the run-up to the match said that he would “love to rub Eddie Jones’s face in the dirt”.
During the match itself Jones and the rest of the England staff were abused by a section of Scotland supporters situated in the seats below, and the whole experience has left an impression.
“If you talk about hate and rubbing people’s noses in the dirt,” he said, “it incites certain behaviours and are they the sorts of behaviours we want to see?”.
