FORMER Wallabies coach Eddie Jones last night accused his successor John Connolly of bungling the World Cup campaign.

Jones told The Courier-Mail the decision to sack George Gregan as captain and hand Stirling Mortlock the job this year backfired as the Australians made a limp quarter-final departure at the hands of England.

Connolly will return from France later this week to trade a business focus on rugby for his two cab licences at Mooloolaba.

Delivering a brutal assessment of the Wallabies' exit, Jones said claims that the scrum has made huge advances since his axing two years ago were shown to lack substance in Marseilles on Saturday.

"It has improved, but not that much, and there were repercussions elsewhere," he said. "At the scrum and the breakdown you would give England eight out of 10 and Australia four."

Jones argued that the other key element in the defeat was the removal of Australia's most capped skipper as the on-field general.

"It was a mistake not having George as captain," said Jones, now serving as right-hand man to Springbok coach Jake White, whose side will play Argentina in a semi-final on Sunday.

"The Wallabies definitely lacked leadership in that game. They never got together to work out what to do, which George was always good at.

"He's been criticised as a halfback in recent times. Some of the stuff was right, some of it wrong. But you could never criticise his captaincy."

Jones said his comments were not an attack on Mortlock.

"It's hard to captain from the No. 13 position and I don't think he was very experienced in that situation at the weekend," he said. "Quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals at a World Cup are life and death. It's not your normal Test footy. The intensity exacerbates strengths and weaknesses. I don't think it was Stirling's fault. It was a matter of circumstance.

"I've coached George and I know he would have been cognisant of the fact he wasn't the captain. It showed out that he didn't want to overrule the bloke in charge."

Bok coach White suggested the Wallabies and All Blacks had choked in losing to England and France.

"There was enough there for both of those teams to have won their quarter-finals," he said.

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