This isn’t a return to chaos of Eddie – but Borthwick needs new men quickly

Hail Felix Jones, the Irishman with two World Cup winners’ medals with South Africa and who then, with much heralding, joined England’s coaching group. And farewell. Suppose it saves money on a long-service award.
The intensity of life in the coaching group of an international rugby team is eye-watering. When he arrived as head man, Steve Borthwick set up the England headquarters in a wing of their Bagshot hotel headquarters for a continual process of cross-pollination of ideas.
• Felix Jones quits as England assistant coach
He has an office that opens out into a short and circular corridor off which there are other offices. He explains that he can walk a few short yards and bump into — or arrange to meet — each of his assistant coaches, his medical staff, administration colleagues or his players, to maintain the thirst for knowledge and improvement for Test rugby and to continue the (as yet, fledgling) England revival.
It is a deadly serious business and in the coaching group people with major ability, and possibly major egos, interact. Daily. Sir Clive Woodward told me that it all became so heated among his coaching group leading up to the two World Cups under his charge that coaching colleagues would simply stalk out of the room. You could see them through the window, fuming outside.
Because Sir Clive was a master, and because he knew enough to select the best man for each position, his group lasted the course, won the World Cup and any differences were forgotten
But England coaches are slipping away, including those ranked near the summit of their areas of expertise. We knew that Aled Walters, the acclaimed conditioning expert, was leaving and he is already part of Andy Farrell’s Irish group.
We knew that Kevin Sinfield, the former rugby league superstar who has performed magnificent feats of endurance in trying to chase down the horror of Motor Neurone Disease, is undecided — at least in public — about his next post in the group, or whether he wants to stay at all. His goals seem ever-changing. For me he did not quite live up to the job as defence coach but as a mentor to players he can still find a role. But we still wait for the next move to be confirmed and what his parameters are.
But the Jones departure almost reminds us of the utter chaos of the Eddie Jones era when coaches seemed to be on a day return ticket and you swore that some of them never even had time to unpack in England before buzzing off to the anonymity from which they emerged, after taking the odd drive-by session. It was preposterous. One colleague reckons Jones employed 30 people at one time or another. How were the players supposed to absorb all that?
But that is not what is happening here. Borthwick is a genuine man and understands from previous experience the desperate need for harmony and how it can be lost.
Friends of Felix Jones pointed to the “instability of the current situation” . We thought he would be a fine defence coach (as he was once a fine attack coach) and one wonders if any of the others wanted to drift into his territory.
Certainty, for Jones to abandon such a post, with one of the highest-profile sporting teams and on a high salary, suggests that it is way, way more than a tantrum or a single argument. No specialist coaches these days demand their own sector of the field. Jones knows that the defence coach must work with the attack coach, and that the lineout cannot learn its lessons by itself. Still, Jones is leaving.
There was a certain joy surrounding what I consider to be two mediocre England Tests against a mediocre New Zealand, both of which England lost. As ever, they promised that they would learn the lessons. Their school days seem to be everlasting.
The autumn Tests are massive for England. No more school days, for goodness’ sake. But Borthwick must now find two or even three world-class operators for two or three different posts. Intensity is crucial. But the critical human jigsaw has to fit together. Felix Jones has decided that there were pieces missing, and that he did not fit.