None of the Rugby Football Union members who, this week, will see the findings into England’s calamitous Rugby World Cup campaign will receive a copy of the review in an effort to avoid of a repeat of four years ago when the inquiry into the flawed 2011 campaign was leaked.
The review interviewed 59 people, including most of Stuart Lancaster’s squad, and all those questioned were assured their input would be confidential. Ian Ritchie, the RFU’s chief executive, led the five-man panel and after Tuesday’s board meeting will focus on finding a replacement for Lancaster, who left his post last week, having stated that only the best will do for the richest union in the world.
The RFU is not planning to hold a media conference after the meeting because it will not be releasing any details of the review. Four years ago, England players were horrified to find that observations they had made about Martin Johnson’s regime were splashed in the media and this year’s squad received a promise that there would be no repeat.
Ritchie met Lancaster at a London hotel last Monday afternoon to discuss the findings that led the panel to conclude that a change of head coach was needed. They spent a couple of hours together and, little more than a year after Lancaster had signed a contract extension to take him through to the 2019 World Cup in Japan, it became clear to him that carrying on was not an option.
He and Ritchie spoke on the telephone the following morning and a board meeting was convened for that evening to confirm his immediate departure.
It is understood that the review did not conclude that Lancaster’s four years in charge had no merit, but England becoming the first host nation to fail to qualify for the quarter-finals counted strongly against him as there would be no goodwill should he carry on. His going became expedient.
The focus now is firmly on Ritchie, who has been criticised for leading the review and taking charge of the mission to find the next head coach. He was forced to defend his position this week, making it clear he had no intention of walking away from the post he filled in December 2011 after joining from the All England Tennis Club, where he held the equivalent role.
There is a feeling at Twickenham that there is an agenda to find a way back for the 2003 World Cup-winning coach, Sir Clive Woodward, to oversee the running of the professional game. When Ritchie was appointed, he was the third RFU chief executive in less than two years. His two immediate predecessors, Francis Baron and John Steele, left after opposing any return for Woodward.
Steele was appointed as Baron’s successor after saying at interview that he would welcome Woodward’s return to the RFU, but was sacked after performing an abrupt about-turn.
Ritchie’s comment this week that Lancaster would not be offered an alternative job within the union because it would be wrong for the new head coach to have his predecessor working in the organisation was interpreted as keeping the door closed to Woodward, who, in recent weeks, has been critical of Ritchie.
“I simply do not believe Ritchie, who does not know a ruck from a maul, is the right man to lead this appointment, let alone have the new man report into him in the years which follow,” wrote Woodward in his newspaper column.
Ritchie will not be conducting the search for a new head coach alone and will call on the RFU chairman, Bill Beaumont, a former England captain, and Jason Leonard, the union’s president who won 119 caps for England, among others.
Ritchie intends to be seen to be in charge, but the politics that blighted the English game at the start of the decade when it became haunted by the World Cup-winning side are resurfacing. As well as looking for a new head coach, with Wales’s Warren Gatland appearing to rule himself out yesterday on Saturday on WalesOnline, the chief executive is fighting for his own survival.
