Jeff Probyn: Mutual trust is what bonds a winning squad together

Why is it that every England team have to proffer the idea that they are so different to those that have gone before? I know that the last World Cup was not exactly a high point for English rugby but that is no reason for the current squad to continually try and disassociate themselves from the past, particularly as 13 of them were very much a part of what they now want to distance themselves from.
Admittedly, there is far greater media intrusion nowadays (including the sponsors podcast post-match reviews) which they have had to adapt to quickly, but the continual insistence that this squad is so different seems to me odd and unnecessary.
Every squad have done things that they would rather not have revealed in the public domain and until the advent of mobile phone cameras and red-top Press payments for a picture or story, much of it was never reported, which, if just a fraction of the stories were true, is just as well.
Part of the development of a squad is the building of trust between each of its members and a large part of that is how relationships develop on and off the field.
Despite the best efforts of the England team communications manager (Press officer) to portray them as a ‘merry band of brothers’, they will naturally make their own choices.
Some will become lifelong friends, most will just be team-mates and have little or no contact with each other once they are out of the squad. But for a team to be successful they must each earn something that is universal to all successful sides – respect for each other as players.
You may not like who you are playing with, but you respect him as a player and part of that comes from being a part of the group on and off the field.
The amount of time that squads are together now makes it even more important that they are able to relax together knowing that they can rely on their team mates not to ‘drop them in it’.  I assume that today, as when I played, not everybody is an angel who finishes training, drinks his power shake and goes to bed reading his play book.
Some probably slip out for a beer early in the week with the management’s blessing but they will want to know that those who remain back at base are ok with what they are doing.
What they are seeking is the collective respect that enables a team to grow in the confidence of what they might achieve, if you take that respect away, the team can fall apart.
The post 2011 Cup revelations from the leaked PRA report explained why that team failed to deliver on the field.
There was backbiting and whinging about the actions of some players by others which showed little or no collective respect between the players in that squad.
There is no doubt that Lancaster and his management group have fostered an atmosphere that is enabling respect and trust to grow within this squad and they are beginning to believe what they are capable of and setting collective goals.
Dan Cole‘s rebuttal of  Jim Telfer’s diatribe as ‘predictable’ shows a confidence within the squad that they now expect people to see them as arrogant – because as a squad they believe they can win any game they play.
In many ways his response is a paraphrase of Brian Moore’s ‘people hate us but we don’t care because we’re winning’, that he used when we were midway between our Grand-Slam double.
At the time our squad had been together for three years and were on the way to a World Cup final having had the ups and downs of winning and losing games.
Our respect for each other had also grown out of a failure when in the 1987 World Cup we were knocked out at the quarter-final stage by Wales and then faced the beaten finalists France in the first game of the Five Nations that followed.
Despite going into the game as rank outsiders, we were in the lead 9-6 with minutes to go and then the French did what they do best, a length of the field try scored by Lauren Rodriguez taking the score to 10-9 to win the game.
As a squad you learn more about each other from close losses than a win; winning is easy but losing a close game can expose those that aren’t quite good enough.
Over the next few years players came and went as the squad matured, but it was how those players integrated, which was a credit to the selection skills of Geoff Cooke, which eventually delivered our successes on the field. Sometimes changes are made when players retire (get dropped) or get injured. It is how their replacements slot into the style and ethos of the team that can really drive it forward.
Lancaster’s spell with the Saxons has given him an unique advantage of knowing more about those players on the fringes than almost any previous England manager.
Brian Ashton probably had a similar knowledge but was given only a caretaker role going into the 2007 World Cup and it was too close for him bring about change.
That knowledge has enabled Lancaster to bring in a number of young players who have added the enthusiasm of youth to the accumulated knowledge of past failures and successes, making the squad stronger.
And just like all those that have gone before,  the squad that plays together and respects each other on and off the field will be the squad that wins in the end, whatever today’s result.