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Stephen Jones does not disappoint. they are not getting it. Bringing back Lord Bald is not the answer
Coach crash
Vital lessons must be learnt if England are to recover from the earliest exit of any host nation at a Rugby World Cup
Stephen Jones Published: 4 October 2015
Stuart Lancaster promised a bold England style but failed to deliver
SO MANY fond hopes dashed, so many dead dreams. Even in the euphoria of such a remarkable tournament, for the players and coaches and millions of followers whose fervency rarely dipped, last night must have been profoundly deflating.
Never has an England team evoked such differing ratings — a hardcore saw Stuart Lancaster as the Messiah four years ago, and many stayed true until last night. Others were suspicious from the very start, bored by promises that England were “almost there”, “could and should have won” or even the ever-unpopular “we have been flying in training”.
Now they are grounded, it is the low point in their history. Change must now be rapid and profound. As surely as night follows day, there have been seven steps that have led us to this point.
1 DROPPING THE PILOT
Last night began nine years ago. In 2006, England’s rugby team was poised for new glories. Instead, it fell into an abyss. The national team had been struggling since their World Cup triumph of 2003 so the hierarchy at Twickenham created a new post, elite performance director, which they described as the biggest job in world rugby — with perfect justification, because the chosen man was to head up the professional game from top to bottom, find and appoint England head coaches and supervise the whole national scene.
Sir Clive Woodward, whose extraordinary vision had given the team the platform for World Cup glory, perfectly fitted the job description. He was also the racing favourite to land the job he coveted and which, everyone assumed, would drag England out of the run of dire results. But nobody dreamt that the enemies Woodward had made with his single-minded dedication would place personal antipathy ahead of England glory.
On the eve of the vote, with Woodward ahead and for reasons which have never quite become clear, John Spencer, a supporter of the only other candidate, Rob Andrew, was added to the inner circle of grandees who had a vote. Andrew was chosen though it was not to be long until his job was downgraded after what was seen by many as a vision-free tenure.
Many people still have no idea how special a man Woodward is and it would be no exaggeration to say that England’s ghastly reluctance to honour him and to recognise his matchless achievements has cost them up to three World Cups and a great deal of their global standing. It led to the appointment of an internal candidate without experience of international rugby in Stuart Lancaster, who was not remotely of the stature of the great men of the era — Graham Henry, Warren Gatland, Steve Hansen, Michael Cheika, Joe Schmidt — and was the root cause of their disappearance this morning from their own World Cup of 2015.
2 SOFT SELECTION
England’s selection has been a disaster area; with unsackable sacred cows — Messrs Robshaw, Cole, Barritt, Wood, Tom Youngs — rubbing shoulders in the team room with great players usually kept in the realms of outer darkness — Messrs Cipriani, Attwood, Delon and Steffon Armitage, James Haskell, Luther Burrell, Alex Goode.
The endless chopping and changing in every position, sometimes with discredited combinations brought back when everyone felt they had gone forever, has robbed the squad of confidence in itself and each other. The shocking shambles of the midfield and the apparent tendency to choose forwards on statistics instead of power and nasty edges has crippled them.
Lancaster’s original choice of Chris Robshaw as captain and flanker should have been a short-term appointment to tide things over for a season. He has lacked the inspirational qualities in terms of his play and his public speeches, and he has lacked tactical nous under pressure.
3 NEITHER STYLE NOR SUBSTANCE
Lancaster, like every coach in every era, promised a bold England style, playing to an overall structure but then with the players given licence to leap off and use their talents and individual judgments to attack. That was the theory, and yet England have played regularly as a team in the throes of death by coaching, they have been apparently over-programmed, and the philosophies have been quietly forgotten.
Indeed, it has often been almost impossible to work out what England were trying to do, and there have been serious doubts that the team have taken the field with any form of clear purpose or clear mind. You could almost hear the minds of the England players clanking while they wondered what to do next. Joy? Confined.
4 LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES
Until the end, Lancaster insisted the team was full of leaders. Who? There was no evidence of it. Ever. When England had to make the call of their careers against Wales near the end of the game, shot at goal or lineout, a babbling talking shop was formed. A leader is a Neil Back or an Alun Wyn Jones or a Jamie Heaslip or a Conrad Smith, someone who is clearly influencing matters on the field even when off the ball. At the end, it was hard to disagree with Will Carling’s conclusion that it was more a coach-and-schoolboy relationship, rather than the coach setting the team free to work things out for itself.
5 SAM SLAMMED
England threw a 17st spanner into the works of an operation that was already misfiring.
Lancaster went back on his initial observation that it was “highly unlikely” that Sam Burgess could possibly be ready in time for this World Cup. Mike Ford, the clever Bath coach, gave up at least temporarily on the idea that Burgess was even a club standard centre. But not England.
God bless the man. Sam, please go and learn union with Bath. He has suffered the wounding pains of being criticised by fellow international rugby players of the era, among them Carling and Gordon D’Arcy of Ireland, who contributed a devastating and yet measured critique of the total lack of Burgess impact.
But his selection and the feeble dogma behind it has caused utter chaos. Burgess has a set of criteria all of his own, It seems. Two big hits and two carries was a great game. Other players would have been hauled off. He was placed in the squad at the expense of Luther Burrell. At the time, it felt like the lowest moment in England selection history. Today, it feels lower than that.
6 ROCKY PATHWAY
England’s development strategy has been so hopelessly wrong for so long.
The pathway keeps on throwing up England teams who are too young, have too few caps, and lose too much confidence when they’re trying to learn international rugby on the hoof. Around two-thirds of the current England squad were capped too early; they should have been left to grow in their club teams and hit international rugby only when they could do so with authority and confidence.
The first step for so many England coaches, Lancaster included, has been to see the next man in line as the player who recently left the England Under-20 setup. An older generation of players is discarded, not exposed to the international scene or the national coaches, and end up distracted and disappointed without ever joining the national party. The whole development strategy should be torn to shreds, the shadowy coaches inside the structure moved on, and if the best player in England is 40 years old, they should pick him.
7 CULTURE CLASH
When Lancaster came in it was in many ways a perfect time for him. The country was rightly ashamed of some of the off-field exploits of the England team in 2011, and Lancaster’s promise to change the culture caused great happiness amongst many — even those who, like myself, believe that culture comes from successful teams, it does not create successful teams. It is a symbiotic relationship.
So he went back into history and some grand old England lags spoke to the team to inspire them — but to point to history, even to illustrate that history with characters and great players from the past, is not the same as creating a culture.
It also helps players to have a historical perspective, if they are older. No England team has ever fought so passionately, has ever played with such courage and hard-noses, as the Dad’s Army of 2003. The togetherness of this England squad has been a byword for some. Yet their discipline never stopped them leaking the team, every week. And remember 2011? That team harped endlessly about their unity and confidence, immediately before filling in questionnaires which savaged the whole operation.
But did Lancaster and his men take monasticism too far? It seems to me that all traces of individuality and difference, all characters seen to be in the least non-conforming, have been steadily planed away. Pennyhill Park, in my opinion, has become a hothouse of inward-looking people, and Lancaster was plain wrong not to add to his coaching squad someone from way outside, someone with experience and perspective. Character and individuality thrive in all the best teams. Dwarf-throwing is clearly unacceptable. But a few drinks? A late-night escapade or two? A blast in the press that was not media-managed? Those are surely the small price you pay for men of character, colour, authority and individuality.
England of 2015 were conformist, and an amorphous lump of white.
Coach crash
Vital lessons must be learnt if England are to recover from the earliest exit of any host nation at a Rugby World Cup
Stephen Jones Published: 4 October 2015
Stuart Lancaster promised a bold England style but failed to deliver
SO MANY fond hopes dashed, so many dead dreams. Even in the euphoria of such a remarkable tournament, for the players and coaches and millions of followers whose fervency rarely dipped, last night must have been profoundly deflating.
Never has an England team evoked such differing ratings — a hardcore saw Stuart Lancaster as the Messiah four years ago, and many stayed true until last night. Others were suspicious from the very start, bored by promises that England were “almost there”, “could and should have won” or even the ever-unpopular “we have been flying in training”.
Now they are grounded, it is the low point in their history. Change must now be rapid and profound. As surely as night follows day, there have been seven steps that have led us to this point.
1 DROPPING THE PILOT
Last night began nine years ago. In 2006, England’s rugby team was poised for new glories. Instead, it fell into an abyss. The national team had been struggling since their World Cup triumph of 2003 so the hierarchy at Twickenham created a new post, elite performance director, which they described as the biggest job in world rugby — with perfect justification, because the chosen man was to head up the professional game from top to bottom, find and appoint England head coaches and supervise the whole national scene.
Sir Clive Woodward, whose extraordinary vision had given the team the platform for World Cup glory, perfectly fitted the job description. He was also the racing favourite to land the job he coveted and which, everyone assumed, would drag England out of the run of dire results. But nobody dreamt that the enemies Woodward had made with his single-minded dedication would place personal antipathy ahead of England glory.
On the eve of the vote, with Woodward ahead and for reasons which have never quite become clear, John Spencer, a supporter of the only other candidate, Rob Andrew, was added to the inner circle of grandees who had a vote. Andrew was chosen though it was not to be long until his job was downgraded after what was seen by many as a vision-free tenure.
Many people still have no idea how special a man Woodward is and it would be no exaggeration to say that England’s ghastly reluctance to honour him and to recognise his matchless achievements has cost them up to three World Cups and a great deal of their global standing. It led to the appointment of an internal candidate without experience of international rugby in Stuart Lancaster, who was not remotely of the stature of the great men of the era — Graham Henry, Warren Gatland, Steve Hansen, Michael Cheika, Joe Schmidt — and was the root cause of their disappearance this morning from their own World Cup of 2015.
2 SOFT SELECTION
England’s selection has been a disaster area; with unsackable sacred cows — Messrs Robshaw, Cole, Barritt, Wood, Tom Youngs — rubbing shoulders in the team room with great players usually kept in the realms of outer darkness — Messrs Cipriani, Attwood, Delon and Steffon Armitage, James Haskell, Luther Burrell, Alex Goode.
The endless chopping and changing in every position, sometimes with discredited combinations brought back when everyone felt they had gone forever, has robbed the squad of confidence in itself and each other. The shocking shambles of the midfield and the apparent tendency to choose forwards on statistics instead of power and nasty edges has crippled them.
Lancaster’s original choice of Chris Robshaw as captain and flanker should have been a short-term appointment to tide things over for a season. He has lacked the inspirational qualities in terms of his play and his public speeches, and he has lacked tactical nous under pressure.
3 NEITHER STYLE NOR SUBSTANCE
Lancaster, like every coach in every era, promised a bold England style, playing to an overall structure but then with the players given licence to leap off and use their talents and individual judgments to attack. That was the theory, and yet England have played regularly as a team in the throes of death by coaching, they have been apparently over-programmed, and the philosophies have been quietly forgotten.
Indeed, it has often been almost impossible to work out what England were trying to do, and there have been serious doubts that the team have taken the field with any form of clear purpose or clear mind. You could almost hear the minds of the England players clanking while they wondered what to do next. Joy? Confined.
4 LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES
Until the end, Lancaster insisted the team was full of leaders. Who? There was no evidence of it. Ever. When England had to make the call of their careers against Wales near the end of the game, shot at goal or lineout, a babbling talking shop was formed. A leader is a Neil Back or an Alun Wyn Jones or a Jamie Heaslip or a Conrad Smith, someone who is clearly influencing matters on the field even when off the ball. At the end, it was hard to disagree with Will Carling’s conclusion that it was more a coach-and-schoolboy relationship, rather than the coach setting the team free to work things out for itself.
5 SAM SLAMMED
England threw a 17st spanner into the works of an operation that was already misfiring.
Lancaster went back on his initial observation that it was “highly unlikely” that Sam Burgess could possibly be ready in time for this World Cup. Mike Ford, the clever Bath coach, gave up at least temporarily on the idea that Burgess was even a club standard centre. But not England.
God bless the man. Sam, please go and learn union with Bath. He has suffered the wounding pains of being criticised by fellow international rugby players of the era, among them Carling and Gordon D’Arcy of Ireland, who contributed a devastating and yet measured critique of the total lack of Burgess impact.
But his selection and the feeble dogma behind it has caused utter chaos. Burgess has a set of criteria all of his own, It seems. Two big hits and two carries was a great game. Other players would have been hauled off. He was placed in the squad at the expense of Luther Burrell. At the time, it felt like the lowest moment in England selection history. Today, it feels lower than that.
6 ROCKY PATHWAY
England’s development strategy has been so hopelessly wrong for so long.
The pathway keeps on throwing up England teams who are too young, have too few caps, and lose too much confidence when they’re trying to learn international rugby on the hoof. Around two-thirds of the current England squad were capped too early; they should have been left to grow in their club teams and hit international rugby only when they could do so with authority and confidence.
The first step for so many England coaches, Lancaster included, has been to see the next man in line as the player who recently left the England Under-20 setup. An older generation of players is discarded, not exposed to the international scene or the national coaches, and end up distracted and disappointed without ever joining the national party. The whole development strategy should be torn to shreds, the shadowy coaches inside the structure moved on, and if the best player in England is 40 years old, they should pick him.
7 CULTURE CLASH
When Lancaster came in it was in many ways a perfect time for him. The country was rightly ashamed of some of the off-field exploits of the England team in 2011, and Lancaster’s promise to change the culture caused great happiness amongst many — even those who, like myself, believe that culture comes from successful teams, it does not create successful teams. It is a symbiotic relationship.
So he went back into history and some grand old England lags spoke to the team to inspire them — but to point to history, even to illustrate that history with characters and great players from the past, is not the same as creating a culture.
It also helps players to have a historical perspective, if they are older. No England team has ever fought so passionately, has ever played with such courage and hard-noses, as the Dad’s Army of 2003. The togetherness of this England squad has been a byword for some. Yet their discipline never stopped them leaking the team, every week. And remember 2011? That team harped endlessly about their unity and confidence, immediately before filling in questionnaires which savaged the whole operation.
But did Lancaster and his men take monasticism too far? It seems to me that all traces of individuality and difference, all characters seen to be in the least non-conforming, have been steadily planed away. Pennyhill Park, in my opinion, has become a hothouse of inward-looking people, and Lancaster was plain wrong not to add to his coaching squad someone from way outside, someone with experience and perspective. Character and individuality thrive in all the best teams. Dwarf-throwing is clearly unacceptable. But a few drinks? A late-night escapade or two? A blast in the press that was not media-managed? Those are surely the small price you pay for men of character, colour, authority and individuality.
England of 2015 were conformist, and an amorphous lump of white.
