The Rugby Football Union’s review of England’s World Cup rolls on, spitting out its victims and culprits. It’s like some giant maul from the 1970s, an apparently harmless agglomeration of bodies – heads down, arses up – until somebody reels out of it, clutching whichever part of his anatomy has been bitten, gouged or snatched. Sam Burgess has staggered away, Stuart Lancaster has been ejected and Mike Brown has said he’s at a loss to know whom he can trust any more.
The England full-back is well known for being a candid and emotional character, and we should all express our gratitude to him for being so, but the moment you go public on the matter of breakdown in the esprit de corps, it’s likely that more than a few of your team-mates are going to feel they can no longer trust you.
How can you trust somebody that does not trust? His intervention may have been more of a crowbar in the wound than a butterfly stitch.
Still, in the accretion of ridicule it was an entirely positive input compared with the revelation that a kit-man known as Reg had persuaded several players to take a not inconsiderable punt on LGO Energy. Energy as in supplement, you might think – as in cans of protein-heavy powder lugged around by Reg in his line of work. Apparently not. Reg was plugging LGO, as in an oil-drilling company whose share price did not quite go the way Reg had predicted. It helps explain why trust is not a given in the camp.
No doubt there are more revelations to come. Rumours fly when a regime is in limbo; leaks abound. It still comes as a surprise, given the reputation Twickenham has for being the pillar of a rather stuffy England, that it should fall prey to these regular bouts of aberrant behaviour.
And yet they are not so very surprising at all. A rather delicious lawlessness has been very much the defining state of play for the 20 years we have had of professional rugby. England is never far from a row between the supplier clubs and the mothership governing body.
These clubs are anything but representative of a stuffy England. Dropped without warning in 1995 into professionalism, they have survived the hard way: by being savvy; sticking together and by never shying away from a fight when trust – the word that won’t go away – breaks down. They are the barons and when the king of England comes a-calling to raise a national team, they have forged a magna carta – a player-release agreement – that are the terms and conditions to have emerged from the 20-year battle for control.
Any coach who comes in and expects to have free access to the best players in his new land, so that he may have a look here and experiment there, and swap that player for this on the eve of the Six Nations, well, he can think again. England is not Wales or Australia or New Zealand. It is England, strong on club autonomy, ambiguous about its devotion to the national cause.
Jake White and Eddie Jones would reckon they have been around the block and handled difficult characters and awkward situations. Michael Cheika rewrote the rules of Australian eligibility as he turned the mutinous Wallabies into World Cup finalists in 12 months. But England are different. The players are conditioned and contracted to stay the course of a long club season. England the national team play in short campaigns but with high ball-in-play times.
If there is a club priority, it is to catch up and overtake France. That is, to use the BT investment in club rugby to give them the financial muscle and shoulder muscle to take on Toulon and Clermont. Bulk up the best of England and batter the beasts of France. And all the while, national teams are talking about liberating the players, running more, passing more, thinking of the game where the ball will be alive for 60 out of 80 minutes.
To coach England you have to know the culture and the lack of trust in England. With all respect to White and Jones and Cheika – eminent international coaches all – this is a job for an English coach. Or Warren Gatland, who had success with Wasps. Except that Gatland has said he is staying with Wales until 2019 and he is known and loved (in Wales) for keeping his word.
Ian Ritchie has stated that international experience matters. The chief executive at the RFU might have been advised not to lay down any conditions. Having appointed Lancaster, he won’t redeem himself simply by reversing the criteria of last time.
It could also be pointed out that Rob Baxter was an assistant to Lancaster on the England tour to Argentina in 2013. Does that count as international experience, or merely a taste? Depends if the England board want to offer the Exeter coach the job.
At the moment, everybody bar White seems to be pulling back from expressing any interest. Jones loves his view of Table Mountain. Wayne Smith is enjoying a break from the game. Mike Ford of Bath and Baxter of Exeter have said they have projects to finish at their clubs.
Presumably this is the calculated disinclination of the really interested. Do they honestly need to be told that this is one of the plum jobs in the game – a downright strange, often frustrating and always demanding job, but most definitely plum? And very well rewarded, because somehow “the richest union in the world” is always appended to England.
So, where will England, the richest union in the world, turn for their man? And when? They can’t delay because there is only so much ridicule the RFU can absorb without crumbling. But they cannot rush it either. Make the wrong call now and the bond of trust that unites the best teams will vanish from the home dressing room at Twickenham.
