FORMER Wallabies coach Eddie Jones has a burning desire to coach rugby league and is interested in returning to Australia to fulfil it.
Jones, who recently announced that he will quit as the director of rugby at English club Saracens after the current season, has not yet decided his long-term future.
The former Randwick hooker joined Saracens in 2006 as a consultant and later took over as director of rugby from Australian Alan Gaffney.
He will also continue his association with Japanese rugby club Suntory. He also has tentative commitments to tutor coaches in South Africa in June during the British and Irish Lions tour to the Republic.
However, the man who directed the Wallabies to the 2003 World Cup final in Sydney against England last night told the Herald of his ambition to one day coach rugby league.
He said he had not received any formal offers from English Super League club Wigan, as had been reported, nor from any English rugby clubs - although Wasps and Leicester are said to be interested.
But his dream is to coach in the NRL in Australia.
"I played league when I was a young kid and loved the game," he said from London. "I always watched the game pretty intently and still watch it.
"If ever there was an opportunity to do that I would jump at it because I think it is a fantastic game. It would be a great challenge."
However, Jones also spoke of his willingness to be a part of a Japanese Super team, if one were created as part of proposed expansion plans for the Super 14 competition.
"That is definitely a possibility," he said. "Japan is the market that could potentially take off the most."
He spoke of his concerns over the future of Super rugby, unless it underwent an overhaul.
"The expansion from Super 12 to Super 14, I don't think, has been successful," he said. "It might have been successful in generating more television which is important for the participating unions and franchises.
"But I don't think it has created a better competition, or attracted more supporters to the game. It has probably had the opposite effect. And the level of the competition, I think, has really fallen off."
Jones believes that the competition needs to be structured along the lines of the National Football League in the United States, where there are conferences and play-offs.
Jones also reiterated his disdain for the International Rugby Board's new experimental law variations (ELVs) that are being used in tournaments around the world.
"They make it more complicated for the referee," he said. "They have more to look at and are missing out on areas of the game. Defence is getting an advantage over attack. The whole idea of the ELVs was to give the game greater balance ? and it hasn't done that."
