‘We lived in fear under England coach, it was like living in a dictatorship under a despot who disappeared people’

DANNY CARE has revealed that playing for Eddie Jones was like “living in a dictatorship”.

The former England star earned 101 caps and played under the Australian coach for all seven years of his tenure.

Care, 37, announced his retirement from international rugby earlier this year.

He has now released an autobiography, ‘Everything Happens for a Reason’.

In his book, he has slammed Jones, 64, for his coaching style that left “everyone scared” of him.

He told The Times: “When I look back at it.

“That’s the sad thing. How can an environment, that should be the best of the best, how can it be like that, when everyone is so scared of the guy at the top that you can’t have a conversation with him?

“Any day you look at him wrong or someone says the wrong thing, and he could just blow.”

The scrum-half insisted that Jones saw players as “dispensable”.

He added: “He was so powerful because he knew he had all these lads at his disposal, so many good players that he could get rid of you.

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“It was a luxury he had.”

Care was exiled from the England team for four years by Jones despite staring in the set-up for three years.

He was told the news in a three-second voicemail, but his exile came after he asked Jones to explain his decision.

Care is “100 per cent” sure that he would have returned to the team earlier he had apologised.

He added: “We were all living in that fear.

“That you say the one wrong thing and your whole career could be determined.

“If, after three games, you don’t like something and say so to Eddie, you could have gone on to win 100 caps, but you’d only ever win three.

“There’d be times where a young lad would come to one of us older lads, and be like, ‘Eddie’s saying this and that to me, what should I do?’

“And the advice would be, ‘that’s the way it is, just find a way to keep his attention off you.’

“You almost don’t want him to speak to you in the day, because you don’t know which way it’s going to go, you almost just want it to go under the radar, which then breeds a selfish mentality that you’re just looking out for yourself.

“We weren’t suffering in silence. We’d be like, ‘Who’s getting chopped today?’

“Or if he’s in a bad mood, everyone would be like, ‘Right, head down, eat your breakfast, go and train, get back to your room.’

“You know, we did live in fear, which is mental.

“You have alpha males, like Hask [James Haskell], three times his height, genuinely petrified of the power that man had. Ultimately he could define your career.”

Jones was sacked as England head coach by the RFU in December 2022 after a poor run of results.

He left the role with the highest win percentage (73 per cent) of any England coach.

He was then hired by Australia in January 2023 for a second time but resigned in October.

There had been reports that he had held an interview over the Japan job while in charge of the Aussies, which he denied.

In December 2023, he was announced as the new head coach of Japan.