Former England wing Jonny May has told how a hotel room mix-up on tour in Argentina left Eddie Jones laughing so hard he “couldn’t do his job properly for two days”.
May told the story on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast, sitting next to his old coach in the week Jones brings Japan to Twickenham to face England. Jones started laughing before May had even got going.
“Eddie was laughing with tears for days about this one,” May said.
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Room 203
The story involves Dean Benton, England’s head of strength and conditioning under Jones. May said the pair were “obsessed with stretching”, and that was the problem.
“We get to Argentina, right? This big hotel. My room is 203,” May said.
“We had the whole hotel. So they’ve just left all the doors on a latch, so we’re the only people in the hotel. You don’t need to swipe your card.
“So I go into my room and Benton’s… I don’t know what he was doing, but it looked like he was in between the beds stretching his hip flexors, or doing something like Jean-Claude Van Damme across two beds.”
May apologised and expected the same back. It did not come.
“I was like, ‘F***, sorry, Dean.’ I put myself in his shoes, you’d be like, ‘Oh, sorry, am I in the wrong room?’ And he didn’t. He was like, ‘Get the f*** out.’ Screaming.”
‘It’s Benton’s mistake’
Only once he was back in the corridor did May check his key card.
“I looked at my card and I was like, ‘Benton’s in my room.’ I’ve gone down to reception. Eddie’s there,” he said.
“It’s Benton’s mistake. I was in room 203. He was 2003.”
So May had walked into the right room. Benton was the one in room 203, when his own room was 2003, on the 20th floor.
‘What was Benton doing in your room, mate?’
The room got sorted. Jones did not move on.
“Eddie didn’t stop laughing for three days,” May said. “And I remember being at dinner and the doctors coming up to Eddie saying, ‘We’ve got…’ and Eddie was like, ‘Jonny, what was Benton doing in your room, mate?’
“And we still don’t really know.”
By this point Jones was in fits again in the studio, with the host noting “I love how happy he is”.
“Eddie couldn’t do his job properly for two days,” May added. “You couldn’t, mate.”
There are no hard feelings. Just before telling the story, May said Benton “speaks to me all the time” and credited him with a big part of his development.
“When I look back, I’m so grateful to have Dean as head of S&C when Eddie wanted me to be faster and be better,” he said.
May also used the episode to apologise to former England scrum coach Neal Hatley for posting a video of him in the Twickenham bath into the wrong WhatsApp group, and to describe a team song that “got longer and longer” because “every campaign Eddie would sack some staff”.
Jones and Japan face England at Twickenham on Saturday.
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