Lancaster’s lost his four biggest games ...that’s why he has no England future
YOU know the real kneejerk reaction these days? Announcing that there will be no knee - j erk reaction. That’s the biggest knee-jerk of all, the race to assume the role of the only grownup in the village. Takes the place of thought, analysis, leadership, honesty, evidence-based criticism.
Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the RFU, was at it yesterday. What a sight he was — the man who gave Stuart Lancaster a sixyear contract, lecturing the room on the need not to act in haste.
‘It is a time for calm, rational, considered reflection,’ said an administrator who decided Lancaster was right for the next World Cup before this one had even started. ‘We will do that in a calm, considered manner.’
He then talked up the final Pool A game with Uruguay, the one that is now the third most important sports event taking place in Manchester next week, behind the Rugby League Grand Final and Terry Flanagan versus Diego Magdaleno for the WBO world lightweight title.
You could probably make a case for Oldham Athletic versus Scunthorpe United, too, considering the parlous state of those clubs near the bottom of League One. At least it matters.
Ritchie was looking pretty lightweight himself yesterday, as he blathered on. He should be mortified right now. Instead, he is pompously pontificating, as if he has a shred of credibility left.
He has endorsed, long-term, a management regime that has just delivered the worst World Cup of any hosts in the history of the competition.
And, still, he presumes to look down on his critics.
Having staked so much on Lancaster and his team, the RFU has no clue where to go now. It advances the long-winded review as if it is a considered solution, when in reality it is part of the problem.
The RFU cannot act decisively because never, in its wildest imagination, did it think this could happen.
When Rob Andrew, the RFU’s Professional Rugby Director, said England would be better equipped to win in 2019, do not for one second presume he was thinking that the team wouldn’t make it out of the group in 2015.
A worst-case scenario involved a quarter-final exit, as Martin Johnson’s dwarf-tossers achieved in 2011. No country that has won a World Cup has ever failed to make the quarter-finals, and no host nation, either.
Pool A was devilishly tricky, true, but England had every other advantage. All key games at Twickenham, seven or eight-day recovery times, even for the last match against Uruguay. They spent an age in training camps, with the familiar claim of being the best prepared side, as if the other nations spend their time sticking chips up their noses and finger-painting.
And for what? To enter a tournament still unsure of the best XV or the best way to play.
England talked and talked about philosophy, culture and leadership yet, when the crunch came, were missing all three. Wales and Australia knew what they were about at Twickenham; England didn’t.
So, of course, Lancaster must go. Not as a knee-jerk reaction and not to the sound of a furious mob. He is a decent, honest man, who did his best. It wasn’t good enough.
That isn’t a crime, but it isn’t a reason to keep him on either. England may have the makings of a good side, but this was his chance to tease that out and he didn’t.
The game-changing move against Australia, the introduction of the creative presence Lancaster dropped, George Ford, was forced upon him by an injury to Jonny May. England got good, briefly, by accident.
‘We haven’t lost many big games,’ Lancaster said after the worst home defeat in the history of Tests with Australia, but that isn’t true, either.
England have lost the four biggest games they have played during his tenure, and spectacularly in most cases. Wales away for the 2013 Grand Slam; Ireland away in what was termed a Grand Slam decider in 2015; Wales at Twickenham in the World Cup; now Australia at Twickenham seven days later. Some say this is all part of the learning curve. Yet where is the upturn in that curve?
The line begins with England unable to secure the Grand Slam away, and ends as recently as Saturday night with them unable to win a crucial match at home.
In between there are the odd ups and downs, promise emerges, fades, gets replaced by Sam Burgess — and what some see as progress is just the narrative of a team as time passes. Good games, bad games, but England are still waiting for the leap, the sustained success that will signify the improvement we are told is being made.
Lancaster was lucky in starting from a low base. The 2011 World Cup campaign will be remembered, mainly, for its charmless nature, an absence of discipline that alienated the players from their nation.
Lancaster restored that affection, although it was noticeably missing as he gave his pitch-side interview after the game and boos could be heard from those that were not celebrating Wallabies.
At that moment, it is possible to assume the crowd would have gladly swapped Lancaster’s cleancut England for some dwarf-throwing, beer-drinking, harbour-diving orcs who knew how to win a game of rugby.
What Lancaster’s regime will get is credit for the basics. Civilised behaviour, discipline — off the field, not on it, as the penalty count against England in this tournament shows — positive messages, clean noses. In other words, t he unquantifiable.
This is the English way, winning trophies that do not exist. Lancaster spoke, after the Wales game, of the little awards that are given out to players in private and it is as if England’s management yearn for one, too. Best prepared. Best in training. Finest pre-tournament camp.
The elements for which hard evidence exists, not just turnovers and carries, but scorelines and grouptable positions, can then be ignored. To draw conclusions from them would be knee-jerk, or hasty — says the man who awarded a six-year contract to a coach who had not even won the Six Nations at the time.
It is hard not to appreciate Lancaster’s sincerity as an individual, but harder still to be his advocate this morning. Certainly, the argument that Clive Woodward disappointed at a home World Cup in 1999, before leading England to its only glory four years later is utterly specious.
Decent, honest man who did his best − but it wasn’t enough
Lancaster has had four years and the best funded back-up
Woodward was appointed in 1997 and had less than two years to prepare for the tournament. There was no real RFU infrastructure, no support staff and a pitiful budget. The England players did not have contracts and his predecessors were not full-time professionals. There were no additional training camps, and not even a formal arrangement governing the release of players from their clubs.
Woodward had to as good as invent the structure that would produce the world’s No 1 team. Despite this, he reached the World Cup quarter-finals before losing to South Africa.
Lancaster, by contrast, has had the best part of four years and the most well-funded back-up in world rugby. It would be like comparing the Manchester City that Manuel Pellegrini inherited from Roberto Mancini, to the one Jimmy Frizzell handed over to Mel Machin.
We like to presume coaching England is so tough that only a rare genius can do it — that’s how Roy Hodgson kept the football job, after Brazil — but this isn’t true.
There is an outstanding long list if the RFU considers foreign candidates, such as Warren Gatland, and a shorter one if Lancaster’s successor is to be English, as it rightly should.
Jim Mallinder of Northampton Saints has had England experience with the Saxons and Academy, and Rob Baxter of Exeter Chiefs was added to the England staff for the tour of Argentina and Uruguay in 2013.
Mike Ford of Bath is favourite if the RFU is bold enough to give the job to the father of one of the players.
But there has to be a successor, because to endorse Lancaster would suggest what we have seen at this World Cup does not matter. That would be the biggest knee-jerk of all.