Maro Itoje has rejected Eddie Jones’ negative assessment of his leadership as the “wrong diagnosis” after being entrusted with the Saracens captaincy for the new season.
Itoje has been appointed as Owen Farrell’s successor at the north London club three years after his former England head coach Jones was scathing of his prospects of ever leading the national side.
Jones, writing in his book ‘Leadership’, viewed the Lions second row as “inward-looking”, adding that he “drives himself rather than anyone else. He doesn’t usually influence people off the field”.
Jones’ opinion has since been proved wrong as Itoje took over from Jamie George as England skipper when his Saracens team-mate left the field on the summer tour to Japan and New Zealand.
The comments made by the Australian, who was sacked in 2022, raised eyebrows at the time given he was still in charge at Twickenham and for Itoje it was a mistaken characterisation.
“I felt that was a wrong diagnosis of who I am. Most people who know me and most people who read those comments who knew me, would say that was an inaccurate conclusion to who I am as a person,” Itoje said.
“I guess it was unfortunate that your coach would say something like that about you, but in life not everyone is going to see the things the way you see it.
“For me it wasn’t necessarily about over-reacting to that sort of thing. I just wanted to stay consistent to who I believed I was.
“For me, reflection is a really important part of what I try to do. I like to think I have a pretty accurate assessment of how I am, what I like, what makes me tick.”
Jones claimed to have sent Itoje to acting classes to draw out his “internal fire”, but the Saracens forward denies these took place. “I was not waltzing across a stage and practising my Shakespearean prose,” he said.
Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, and Muhammad Ali are appreciated as heroic leaders by Itoje, but closer to home the Arsenal fan admires the influence Patrick Vieira had on the Gunners.
“During the 2000s, Patrick Viera was in his prime and in his pomp. He was a big hero of mine. He was tough. Extremely tough,” he said.
“He was a no-nonsense player, he was elegant. I loved his spats with Roy Keane in the tunnel.
“He was graceful, he didn’t seem like the loudest man in the room but he had a presence about him.
“He knew he had the respect of his team-mates and he was a winner. He was captain of Arsenal during their most successful period… what’s not to like?”
When Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall asked Itoje to be skipper during the summer he accepted immediately. The England captaincy is not on his radar, however.
“That position is held by my friend and team-mate Jamie George. So I’m not commenting on another man’s job. I’ve barely started this one. I want to give my best to this and see where we go,” he said.
“I want to try and be as authentically myself as possible. I want to lead in ways that are natural to me. I don’t want to deviate too much from what has made me the man/player I am today.
“To be a good leader you have to lead by example. People definitely won’t follow you if you are not walking the walk and that’s how I envisage going about my business.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here