Nick Cain’s column: Is Teflon Rob Andrew ensuring he hangs onto his job?
Maybe it’s a cunning plan? Rob Andrew’s version of lulling England‘s opponents in the 2015 World Cup into a false sense of security before delivering the deadly blows that will see Stuart Lancaster‘s red rose squad crowned as world champions for the second time in 12 years.
That’s a charitable way of looking at the lamentably-timed statement this week from ‘Teflon Rob’, the RFU professional rugby director, that England will be ready to win the World Cup not here, not now, on their own turf – which is what his brief should be all about – but in three years’ time.
The uncharitable view, but the more realistic one, is that Andrew, who is part of an RFU structure that has all the hallmarks of a new Civil Service, is hedging his bets. He is trying to manage expectations downwards, before the world’s showpiece tournament in case it all goes pear-shaped for Lancaster’s outfit. That way, if he does it well enough, he will still be on the RFU payroll.
Stroll on, Rob! With that level of ambition, and conviction, ambling towards some undefined golden horizon is all England will ever be doing for the next 50 years, rather than winning World Cups. Whether they actually win in 2015 or not, and whether those who are charged with getting them there on the City-scale salaries, are accountable for their success or failure is something that Andrew is less comfortable talking about.
Two World Cups have passed since Clive Woodward’s side were crowned world champions, and with a third tournament imminent in which England have the massive boost of home advantage, Andrew’s ‘jam-tomorrow’ announcement was a serious error of judgment.
When a clarion call was needed to stiffen the sinews and make the country, and England squad, believe that they can scale Rugby Union‘s Everest – and for Andrew to have the courage of his convictions having backed Lancaster’s appointment to the hilt – instead we got a fudge, a luke-warm endorsement that wouldn’t inspire a toddler to tackle the steps to a garden slide.
Andrew has made an art form of making sure that none of the adverse fall-out from England’s record under coaches/managers from Andy Robinson back in 2004, through Brian Ashton and Martin Johnson, to Lancaster today, has ever stuck to him.
He is at it again judging by these comments: “Is this team going to peak at this World Cup? I don’t know. I doubt it, to be honest. I suspect this team will get better over the next two or three years. I don’t think there’s any question of that, because the age profile and the experience profile is going to grow.”
Next comes the hedge: “That doesn’t mean, today, it’s not going to be good enough, or have the experience to win this World Cup. World Cups are about momentum and letting it grow.”
“It’s going to get close to maybe 500 in the starting XV. Is that going to be enough?
“We don’t know. Other teams will probably have more. Other teams have had more than that over the last couple of years and we’ve beaten them. But we’ve lost games as well.”
Andrew’s equivocation continues: “There’s an experience factor (with this team), but they’ve gained significant experience over the last three years…they’ve got a fair few scars on the way through. Every team has that. It makes you as better team, not only as a group of players but as a group of coaches.
“We all make mistakes. The key is not to repeat them.”
However, after his remarkably successful abnegation of responsibility for the debacle in 2011, Andrew is another who cannot afford to repeat mistakes.
He has been the overseer for the England elite for over a decade, and was instrumental in Lancaster’s appointment ahead of more experienced coaches like Nick Mallett in 2012.
Yet, he says: “We have these marks in time around a World Cup, but this was an even longer journey than just 2015. As magnificent as the tournament will be, it will come and go, and before we know it, it will be next year’s Six Nations and a tour to Australia. Nothing stops. It will be a moment in time.”
That’s true. But it is also true that Andrew’s fortunes are inextricably linked with the success or failure of this England team, not the one that will compete for the 2019 World Cup.
He, and others, have been ‘spinning’ the squad that succeeds the current crew into a world champion team-in-waiting for the last couple of years.
There is no way that Andrew, or anyone else, knows whether the 2019 England team will be any more successful than this one.
And it is the here and now that counts in professional sport, and for which he is accountable.
