He praised the Waratahs for wearing down the Drua in a 46-17 win on Saturday night, singling out back-rowers Hooper and Langi Gleeson, playmaker Ben Donaldson and rookie winger Max Jorgensen.

“That’s the exciting part for Australian rugby. There’s some good, established players - Quade and [Bernard] Foley and [Allan] Ala’alatoa and [James] Slipper and Hooper - and then we’ve got this emerging young talent coming through. We’ve just got to get the mix right in the team.”

He was less generous to Rory Arnold, a mainstay of the Wallabies second row over the past seven years who took a three-year, $4.5 million deal to play in Japan and looks set to stay there despite his club’s season being cancelled.

“He didn’t come on the November tour, so he made a decision not to play for Australia on the November tour, by his own volition,” Jones said.

“At the moment players who do that aren’t in our recognition. We want players who want to play for the Wallabies. That’s commonsense. If he rings up and says he wants to play for the Wallabies, then we’ll have a chat to him.”

The 62-year-old also addressed the departure of senior Wallabies assistant coach McKellar, who rejected Jones’s offer to stay on staff as his anointed successor and took a job with top English club Leicester.

Jones rejected a suggestion McKellar’s absence was a loss for the Wallabies.

“No. We want people who want to be in our system, we don’t want people who want to be their own head coach, there’s only one head coach, so we need guys who want to be good assistants,” he said. “As good a coach as Dan is, we wish him all the best, but we’ve moved on.”

There was plenty of love for Cooper, the veteran playmaker who was Dave Rennie’s first-choice No.10 but is battling an Achilles injury and will be racing the clock to make it back for the Rugby Championship in July.

Jones said had met with Cooper in Brisbane a few weeks back and appeared to guarantee him a World Cup spot, before walking back his position when pinned down on the matter.

“We’ll need to have three No.10s at the World Cup, Quade could be one of them and the other two spots are wide open,” he said.

Jones also let it be known an emotional Australian homecoming in January had not softened his coaching standards.

“The reason the Melbourne Storm have been successful is because the standards are high and you’ve got to set the standards high and be absolutely uncompromising on that,” he said.

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