As English rugby snaps on its rubber gloves for another messy autopsy, the echoes of reviews past are inescapable. The lengthy list of individuals who have now struggled to resurrect the English patient grows ever longer: along the way Andy Robinson, John Wells, Brian Ashton, Mike Ford, Martin Johnson, Brian Smith, Graham Rowntree, Stuart Lancaster, Andy Farrell and Mike Catt have all been scarred by the experience.
Some common themes are emerging. All the above were decent men ultimately snookered by the scale of the task. Almost all are products of the English system, although Ashton, Ford and Smith had some experience of coaching abroad. All were largely familiar from the Rugby Football Union’s point of view. Since Sir Clive Woodward left Twickenham, the RFU has not felt the need to break any moulds.
So the question is this: is England’s forgettable past decade and a bit the fault of the coaches or the conservatism of the people who appointed them? Or is it more the fact that since winning the 2003 World Cup, they have simply not produced enough players of sufficient quality to win global tournaments or grand slams? The more layers you scrape away beneath England’s premature World Cup departure, the more historic rot reveals itself.
According to Farrell, this latest disappointment is simply a blip, whether the management team is jettisoned or not. “I definitely think the future will be good for this group. They will go through a hell of a lot more together. But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise we lack in experience of the big occasion. Experience helps. We have good leaders but a lot of them haven’t got experience. It’s no one’s fault the situation we are in.”
Farrell also singled out the poor decision-making in the last 15 minutes against Wales but that analysis ignores the national side’s lean pickings since 2004. Here, for example, is Catt on the post-2003 years. “There was no legacy. We didn’t pass anything on. There’s been a very poor return from England since we won the World Cup.”
Also quoted alongside Catt in Behind the Rose, the excellent book published last year based on the testimonies of dozens of former England internationals, was Phil Vickery, who led England to the World Cup in 2007. His side reached the final but, even now, few are quite sure how that happened. Vickery also looks back on the period between 2004 and 2007 with some regret. “I’m not trying to blame anyone but everyone was to blame really: players, coaches and management.”
It is a conclusion that could still equally apply in 2015: despite the huge amounts of money, huge numbers of players and all their supposed advantages, England are still not pulling their weight results-wise. It was glaringly apparent against Australia, a team in turmoil themselves prior to Michael Cheika’s installation last year. The English system – that joyless word again – is not producing enough quick, agile opensides, decisive leaders, centres with both intelligence and pace, or coaches with the needle-sharp instincts, man-management skills and breadth of top-level experience. It is a sobering list.
Ashton wrote an excellent column on the subject of developing young players in the Independent the other day; to him an obsession with gym and drills has left England behind the game in the areas of skill execution and instinctive decision-making. It does not help, either, that proactive selection has become an increasingly lost art at the highest level. Anyone who has seen Henry Slade, Elliot Daly, Christian Wade and Maro Itoje play knows England have some extraordinary talent if they were only brave enough to trust it. Bernard Foley, Scott Sio, Tevita Kuridrani, Scott Fardy, Michael Hooper... all are involved in their first World Cup for Australia and seem energised by the experience.
To catch up, England need to think more clearly, on and off the field. It is not good enough to assume that, if Twickenham is full, commercial deals are pouring in and no one leaks the end-of-tournament review, everything will turn out fine on the field eventually. As a matter of urgency the RFU needs to recruit someone from outside English rugby union with a keen eye, a no-nonsense tactical brain and a dislike of the status quo.
The last 12 years have seen too much waste, too many compromises, too much corporate overlap. It is time to strip everything back and acknowledge the root of the problem. English rugby is not as good as it thinks it is.
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