Some of the most interesting stories in sport are the ones that are never properly told. They're the ones you hear whispers about in the pub, told by the friend of a friend, they'll be passed on around your office and perhaps posted in some less salubrious corner of the internet. The days when journalists had sufficient access to English changing rooms to expose most of the seedier goings-on are long gone, which means that if we want to know just what really happens we have to wait for the autobiographies of the people involved.
But such autobiographies are often about the agendas of their authors more than anything else. When we do find out what lurked away from the public's prying eyes it tends to be from a heavily subjective point of view.
In the last two days we've seen two such stories bubble up to the back-page headlines. Both instances have been prompted by new books, and publicity-hungry publishing companies looking to secure a good spot on the Christmas best-seller lists. Duncan Fletcher's new book, Behind the Shades, promises all the ugly details of what went so catastrophically wrong with English cricket over the winter. Lawrence Dallaglio (It's In The Blood: My Life) and Mike Catt (Landing On My Feet) both have their own autobiographies out, each ending with an inside line on the extraordinary events inside the England team during the 2007 World Cup. It promises to be a busy Boxing Day for sports fans.
With all three being serialised by various newspapers, it means that there's an awful lot of mud flying around at the moment. Fletcher's first target is Andrew Flintoff, whose captaincy of the England team last winter is portrayed as an inept shambles. Flintoff is not only pilloried for turning up to training sessions drunk, but is portrayed as an egotist who put his own concerns before those of his team. "I knew if Flintoff was not captain, he would be a huge hindrance to the side," Fletcher writes.
"The areas which concerned me were his tactical nous and his man-management under pressure. And there was always going to be a worry about his self-discipline," Fletcher adds, but the bitterness of the former England coach's take on the situation becomes more apparent when he concludes: "I was soon to discover he was unsure of what true leadership is."
It is not just the headline-stealing anecdotes that make this compelling reading, but the extraordinary vitriol of Fletcher's own judgments. Michael Vaughan wrote long ago in his book Calling The Shots that he wouldn't make Flintoff England captain because of his lifestyle. Fletcher's version of the same sentiment is altogether more vindictive. He is clearly extremely bitter about a winter that effectively robbed him of a reputation and a legacy as one of the game's most successful coaches.
With the rugby players, it is the coach himself who is the target. That this material should become public while the IRB's review process of the World Cup is still ongoing, while Brian Ashton's future contract is still under negotiation, gives it an immediacy lacking from Fletcher's work.
"I hope I'm not about to lose a friendship over what I say about Brian," Dallaglio writes, "who was a good coach who I believe was in the wrong role. Head coach of the England team demands management skills that in my honest appraisal, Brian doesn't have."
He goes on to detail the a litany of mistakes on his coach's part: dropping Joe Worsley and Shaun Perry, treating Phil Vickery like "a leper", not giving Dallaglio himself enough warning about the fact that he was going to be dropped and conducting practice sessions that "had no relevance to match situations". He winds up by describing the side's preparations as like those "of a pub team" and quipping that the World Cup campaign became a "Monty Python sketch".
It is brutal stuff, and given its vehemence it seems extremely unlikely that Ashton will remain in the post he currently occupies next year. There was a degree of backlash against the coaching after England's success in 2003, when several players seemed to think that Clive Woodward was getting too much praise for their victory. Some rugby players, it seems, are curiously reluctant to accept any responsibility themselves except when they've won. The same is true, to an extent, of Duncan Fletcher, who makes himself out to be a man who understood and anticipated what was wrong with England, but was prevented from doing anything about it by those around him.
If the England rugby players were capable of formulating their own strategies for success in the absence of good guidance from their coaches - which is what Dallaglio says happened before the Tonga and Samoa games - then why, we might ask, did they not do it on the field against South Africa in the Pool stage? Then they stuck rigidly to an inept pre-game plan to kick the ball deep downfield at every possible opportunity.
Similarly, if Fletcher was so doubtful about Flintoff's abilities, and so certain in his own opinions, why was he dissuaded from making Andrew Strauss captain by something so banal as a DVD presentation containing the words: "The team has to be together to beat Australia"? And why, when he asked Flintoff, "why should I not drop you as England captain?" and is met by a stony silence, does he then decide to keep him on in the role and later make him vice-captain? Neither is adequately explained.
These are incomplete stories, triple distilled from the truth through the writer, the editor and the newspapers themselves. When Dallaglio says, "I don't want to be seen as the guy lifting the lid on the inside story because that suggests I have some kind of agenda," he's making a very platitudinous attempt to confound the cynics. It doesn't work.
He and Fletcher both have their own agendas, as do the newspapers publishing the extracts. So while this may be an inside line that deserves a little more attention than what your mate's mate has overheard from a guy he works with, it's still worth taking them with a slight pinch of salt and remembering that like all autobiographies, they reveal more about the personality of their writers than they do about their targets. That is why they make such fascinating reading.
