Nick Cain: Martin Johnson’s out and firing – at wrong targets!

Martin Johnson broke cover for the first time in the three years since he resigned as England manager when he gave interviews this week as a 2015 World Cup ambassador. At the time of his resignation the England set-up was a car crash, almost entirely due to the PR disaster that overtook his squad after they went for a night out in Queenstown following their pool victory over Argentina in the 2011 World Cup.
Until now, Johnson, who resigned with dignity after accepting total responsibility for the meltdown, and for the subsequent quarter-final defeat by France, has kept his counsel.
However, he is a proud man and there is no doubt that the scars are still there – and that he sees the media as responsible for inflicting most of them. At one stage he reflected: “Even in 2003 we had to deal with a lot of negative baggage from our own media.”
I don’t intend to rake over the details of the night on the lash, or the other incidents that contributed to the media spotlight being trained on Johnson’s England squad, because they have had enough air-time, web lines and newsprint expended on them.
However, it should be remembered that it was not media subterfuge or snooping that led to the lid being taken off the Queenstown proceedings. Instead, it was a publicity-hungry member of the New Zealand public – namely, the self-righteous doorman at the Queenstown nightclub who stole the CCTV footage and put it on YouTube, with a nauseating commentary attached.
It was a charge for which he was later convicted in a New Zealand court, and sentenced to four months community detention.
The damage was done instantly. Not even the ‘waitress-named-Susie’ food poisoning story surrounding the mystery bug that afflicted the All Blacks before the 1995 World Cup final was as effective in bringing a team to their knees as the doorman’s footage.
Yet, as any PR crisis manager knows, it is what you do in terms of damage limitation that dictates how long the fire lasts – and this is where Johnson and the RFU crew surrounding him got it badly wrong.
My feeling is that it could have been doused within a few days if Mike Tindall had been dropped for a match for unprofessional conduct. A disciplinary slap on the wrist, and only a game against Georgia or Romania missed, would have helped the story to fizzle out.
The problem was that Johnson baulked against taking action, principally because he was far too close to 2003 World Cup teammates like Tindall, and captain Lewis Moody, who were the senior pros he built the 2011 squad around.
This mistake was compounded because no-one at the RFU – including his line boss, Rob Andrew – was prepared to tell Johnson that for the fire to be put out there was no other course. Instead, Johnson, in trying to play down the incident – including his defensive line of “rugby player drinks beer, shock” – fanned the flames.
Johnson says now that the off-field lows could have been mitigated. “Looking back at it, of course I would have done things differently.” However, from his defence of his team’s record of 10 wins in 13 games in 2011 it is clear that the admission does not extend to England’s performances on the pitch.
My contention has always been that those statistics mask the true picture. England’s 10 wins were enough to claim the 2011 Six Nations Championship, but every one of those wins was against teams below them in the IRB world rankings, with the exception of France. That campaign also finished with England being thumped by Ireland in Dublin (24-8) to deny them a Grand Slam, while also indicating that they were not as good as their billing. This had already been signposted by their three 2010 autumn series home defeats by New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
The record also shows that England had one of the easiest pools in 2011, and that they were uninspired in scraping home against Argentina and Scotland. As for the quarter-final against France, poor first-half defence gave them a mountain to climb, and it proved too steep.
The reality is that Johnson was parachuted in to do a difficult job at the time when most of the 2003 generation he went to for leadership were past their prime, and the young players he eventually introduced were not established.
It was always going to be a tough call, and having learned from the experience – albeit bruising – I hope that Johnson gets back into coaching or managing elite rugby because he is too influential and knowledgeable a figure for English rugby to lose.
My only misgiving is that he still appears to see the media as the enemy. Having given his backing to Chris Robshaw as England captain, he made this comment about dealing with Robshaw’s critics.
“Sometimes it’s a good thing for someone to be picked out for criticism… it’s good for a team to be able to use that and say, ‘we will circle the wagons’.
“That’s what rugby’s about, looking after your own. If someone is picking on one of us, you pick on all of us.”
The only problem with that mentality is that if you make the wrong call at the wrong time it can get you shot through with arrows.
Sometimes, as 2011 proved, it’s better to beat a tactical retreat.
*This article was first published in The Rugby Paper on September 28.