Biggest lesson is need for strong head coach

GERRY THORNLEYon how, on the plus side, English rugby's Saipan moment could be an opportune time for a new chief executive and new coach

AS SCOOPS go, the Timesyesterday won the award for sports scoop of the year.

Their publication of the Rugby Players’ Association, Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby reports into England’s failed World Cup campaign makes for compelling reading and will reverberate for weeks, months and maybe years.

At the outset, it’s worth noting the damning revelations are anonymous and it’s also not clear as to how selective they are. It’s also easy to criticise coaches confidentially, and it would be interesting to read the coaches’ view of their players.

No 30-man squad would ever be entirely happy, all the more so after a failed campaign, but even so the players appear better at passing the buck than passing the ball.

Levelling the blame game for the drinking, ill-disciplined, unprofessional culture at senior players also has to be taken with a pinch of salt. After all, allowing for Mike Tindall’s late-night activities, the other publicised miscreants were Dylan Hartley, James Haskell, Chris Ashton and Manu Tuilagi, aka Manu Overboard.

Furthermore, the three reports are coming at their reviews from different angles and, to a degree, are self-serving. For example, it would be no surprise to discover the players’ verdict on forwards’ coach John Wells – “there must be 20 coaches in the Premiership would be better” – emanate from the Premiership Rugby report.

But, in a sense, that doesn’t matter now. For perception is everything, and the perception of England’s World Cup campaign (now even more of a laughing stock in the world game) are of a badly managed, badly coached, ill-disciplined squad riven by divisions amongst coaches and players, some of whom were motivated by money.

The wounds will thus run deep; very deep. How, for example, will Lewis Moody feel about his squad “mates” in years and years to come? He was linked, by name and implication, with the desire for financial gain (thanks to Rob Andrew) and the prevailing lack of professionalism, as well as having his captaincy and even his place in the team questioned.

One of the biggest lessons to be learned from this English exposé is the degree to which the head coach has to choose his own back-up rather than have assistants foisted upon him.

For all of this emanates from the RFU’s decision to retain Andy Robinson but force a changed coaching structure underneath him, which was then in turn foisted upon Brian Ashton.

He enjoyed less than total support from his assistants, to put it mildly, whereupon Martin Johnson inherited some of that ticket when appointed with absolutely no management experience behind him as if his name alone could weave a magic wand.

Johnson comes out of this looking like an honourable, overtly loyal man let down by those around him, but also, too, inexperienced for the job and thus his reign re-affirms the need for an experienced head coach or team manager.

But not only do yesterday’s revelations make the positions of Wells, defensive coach Mike Ford and backs coach Brian Smith utterly untenable, it even makes them difficult to employ in the future. And even the position of the Teflon Man, Andrew, must be untenable now too.

To be fair, the IRFU learned their lesson in affording Declan Kidney carte blanche to choose his own management team, although only after the failed Brian Ashton/Pa Whelan, Warren Gatland/Eddie O’Sullivan and O’Sullivan/Kidney contrived marriages. Even then, as Ireland’s 2007 World Cup campaign demonstrates, it’s no guarantee of success.

But even allowing for the extraordinary coaching critiques, as damning is the apparently money driven and “immature” culture which denigrated hard work. One could never imagine Paul O’Connell, Brian O’Driscoll, Rory Best or any of the Irish team leaders tolerating such a culture for a second, much less leading one, nor could one imagine any Irish dressingroom – provincial ones included – in which a player would bemoan a defeat by calculating how much money it had cost him. Irish rugby is fortunate indeed.

As Stuart Barnes said yesterday, English rugby has been suffering from a moral malaise and its exposure, though painful, could also prove a turning point if it prompts real change. In that sense if this marks a nadir, English rugby’s Saipan moment, then it could even be an opportune time for a new chief executive and new coach.

Ultimately, the reports reflect a culture of entitlement and soccer-style star syndrome, and this emanates as much from their education, their society and their club game as their international team.

Indeed it’s this culture, and attendant lack of respect for the opposition, which always made it unlikely England would win the World Cup. But the England team, for all its recent managerial flaws, is merely a manifestation of these ills.