Borthwick faces starting again
ANALYSIS
PAUL REES LOOKS AT THE DEPARTURES OF FELIX JONES AND ALED WALTERS AND WONDERS WHAT IT MEANS FOR ENGLAND
ONE of the most remarkable features of Warren Gatland’s first stint as Wales‘s head coach, which spanned 12 years from the end of 2007, was that his management team was virtually unchanged during that time. Shaun Edwards, Rob Howley, Robin McBryde and Neil Jenkins remained for the duration of a period which rivals the 1970s as Wales’s most successful era: three Grand Slams, a Six Nations title and two World Cup semi-finals, both of which were lost by small margins.
Gatland had the advantage of working with Edwards and Howley at Wasps, but his skill at keeping his team together was highlighted last week when Felix Jones followed Aled Walters out of the England camp having been defence coach for two campaigns this year.
No reason was given because his departure, which has still to be confirmed, leaked out. It was attributed to what Jones, who was part of South Africa‘s coaching team in the last two World Cups, felt was an unstable working environment. There was no source for the claim and it remains to be validated, but it need not be a slight on head coach Steve Borthwick with so many players ineligible for selection having moved to France: the system rather than personalities.
Jones has said nothing and neither has the RFU which has the thorny problem of how to deal with the 12-month notice period that is part of the coach’s contract. Holding him to it will mean paying him, releasing him would allow another country or club to make a move and not have to pay compensation.
It looks like lose-lose for the governing body which, with the opening autumn international against New Zealand two months away and the national squad gathering before then, has to quickly fill the holes left by Jones and Walters, and by Tom Tombleson who has been released after being part of England’s strength and conditioning team for 10 years. Just as well it will have cash coming in after selling the naming rights for Twickenham.
The appointment of Steve Borthwick as head coach was meant to usher in a period of stability after the toing-and-froing under another Jones, Eddie, who was sacked at the end of 2022, but losing two senior coaches in quick succession threatens to undermine the significant progress made by the team in the last year.
England have not reached the consistent level of Ireland or South Africa, but they were getting there having settled on a style of play and been stable in selection. The loss of the closely fought summer series in New Zealand may be seen as more than a missed opportunity after Argentina‘s victory in Wellington last month, but it represented progress for a side that looked some way behind the All Blacks in the World Cup.
Felix Jones was regarded as a key appointment, even if he was tasked with sorting out the defence rather than the attack, the role it is said he thought he was being given. Kevin Sinfield was in charge of defence but was given responsibility for skills as he mulled over his future with the national side.
Sinfield and Walters, who was part of South Africa’s World Cup winning campaign in Japan in 2019, worked at Leicester with Borthwick before taking the step up with him. So did Richard Wigglesworth and in one sense Jones was the odd coach out having come in from the outside, but with Walters also leaving, should anything be read into that?
Walters has left to join Ireland’s coaching team, a country where the Welshman worked for six years. He made the move partly for family reasons but mainly because the system there is geared towards the national side. Even when the new agreement between Premiership Rugby and the
“What makes it more surprising is that they didn’t jump from a ship in a storm”
RFU is announced later this month, it will only give the England management slightly more control over their players with Borthwick in charge of medical decisions.
The essence of the deal will remain the handing over of a very large sum of money for access to the players outside the official Test windows. Even players on the hybrid contracts that are being prepared for up to 25 of the squad could still get caught up in crossfire.
The Ireland and South African models are different, as Jones would have known, but there is nothing like experience. The role of assistant coach itself may also be a factor. Ideas and initiative are one thing, and he is as obsessed with detail and planning as Borthwick, but someone else has the final say.
What happens if a defence coach pins his system on a certain player but the person in charge of attack wants someone different to suit their approach? Jones got England blitzing and Henry Slade, used to it at Exeter, led the defence, but it meant England lacked pace at outside-centre and at times became cramped in attack in New Zealand.
Decisions are ultimately down to the head coach. No management team, even the one assembled by Gatland when he first arrived in Wales, will agree on everything. When there are arguments, someone will lose out and have to manage their frustration.
“Being in charge is difficult,” said George Skivington, Gloucester’s director of rugby. “In the end it falls on me and I take the heat. We have heated discussions as a management group and had one this morning because the attack coach wanted so much time and so did the defence coach.
“I am still head coach and wanted time spent in units, but you cannot have the lads out training for hours and hours. You have to manage everyone and it is difficult because everyone thinks their areas are the most important: we are all accountable for them and if it is not going well we have to fix it.
“We are a good honest group and everyone is clear on their lane and what they own but you have to support each other. We had a massive review process in the summer because last season was not good enough and we agreed we all had to coach our areas really hard and challenge each other. We ended up trying to problem solve and we ended up crossing lines.”
England’s next opponents New Zealand are also looking for a new coach after Leon Macdonald’s abrupt departure last month having lasted for an even shorter time than Felix Jones. At least in his case there was an immediate explanation with head coach Scott Robertson, whose appointment it was, saying the pair had clashed over playing style and that it had not worked out.
MacDonald, right, had worked with Robertson before, at the Crusaders. He resigned from that position, too, after reportedly falling out with another of the coaches at the franchise, Brad Mooar, who a couple of years ago was dismissed as one of Ian Foster’s assistants with the All Blacks, along with John Plumtree, following a home series defeat to Ireland.
The New Zealand union had to pay up then having not long agreed new contracts with the pair and will have to do so again with MacDonald signing a contract through to the 2027 World Cup. After he left the Crusaders, he became the head coach of the Blues, a position he occupied for five years.
He went from decision-maker to assistant and not even second in charge at the All Blacks with Scott Hansen given that role. Robertson’s management team was 23-strong with two coaches responsible for attack, MacDonald in charge of phase play and Jason Holland leading strike moves.
Long gone are the days when one person did the coaching. With professionalism came specialisation, led by a raft of defence coaches from rugby league. Clive Woodward drafted in various experts during his time in charge of England, including a visual awareness coach.
“As a coach I am always looking for ways to improve my players above and beyond the ‘traditional’ methods,” he said at the time. “Our sight is the most important sense that we have in sport so it seems strange to me that it is so often ignored when it comes to training and creating world class athletes. I strongly believe that there is a link between vision and on pitch performance and through training an athlete’s eyes we will see improvements in their game play and decision making.”
As Borthwick and Robertson sift through the fall-out from the last couple of weeks, they first have to decide whether to bring someone else in – cost is a factor in New Zealand’s case – and they both have ideal candidates who are based elsewhere.
Englishman Shaun Edwards, who has never hidden his ambition of one day being involved with England, is France’s defence coach while New Zealander Tony Brown is in charge of South Africa’s attack and has made a noticeable difference in a short time.
Extricating them from their contracts would cost and would they want to come? France struggled in the Six Nations, hung over from their failure in the World
Cup they hosted to get beyond the quarter-final stage, and for the first time since taking over in 2019 head coach Fabien Galthie came under fire, which was not silenced by finishing second in the Six Nations.
It would offer Edwards the chance of being involved with the Lions again having been the defence coach on the 2009 tour to South Africa and despite his no-nonsense reputation he has consistently shown he can work as part of a team, appreciating that time is scarce and that he has to make the most of it.
It is a big appointment for England. Borthwick is not scheduled to speak to the media before next month’s squad announcement and the RFU no longer holds regular briefings. The longer the silence continues, the more speculation will grow and players who had become accustomed to certainty in recent months are disconcerted by recent events.
“Nobody really saw it coming,” said Northampton full-back George Fur-bank. “It was a bit of a shock and an odd timing. They will be a loss. I loved working with Felix especially and he will definitely be missed. It helped us go from a defence that was ranked fourth or fifth in the world to first or second.”
The club’s outside-half Fin Smith, who won his first cap this year, said Felix Jones was one of the hardest working coaches he had come across and that it was Walters who drove the energy in the group and lightened the mood, as Steve Black did during Graham Henry’s early days with Wales. Neither Borthwick nor Henry were figures players felt they could unburden themselves on, but Walters and Black were. The most successful coaching teams have different characters who complement each other, but in times of strife it is the assistants who tend to pay.
“Nobody really saw it coming,” says George Furbank. “I loved working with Felix”
Foster survived while Mooar and Plumtree were paid off and after Wayne Pivac had lost five of his first six matches after taking over from Gatland as Wales’s head coach after the 2019 World Cup Byron Hayward, someone he had worked with at the Scarlets, left his post as head coach just before the start of the autumn international campaign.
“We are just custodians in our roles,” said Pivac then. He himself was gone within a couple of years with Gatland given his old job back, although history has yet to repeat itself.
The club scene is not different. Bristol finished last season in a flurry of tries and bonus points, just missing out on a top four finish. Within a few weeks of the season, attack coach Dave Walder was gone with no explanation offered. Pay-outs are invariably complemented by silence, which presum-ably is why nothing is coming out of Twickenham.
Jones would have handed in his notice rather than resigned and the comment from an unnamed source about England’s unstable working environment would have been enough to ensure that he would not be asked to see the 12 months out. And so a few weeks before the start of the new season and the announcement of the new deal between the clubs and the RFU, fire fighters are in action. If the environment was not unstable before, it is now.
Eddie Jones’s time in charge of England saw assistants come and go. It was put down to his demanding style of management, but a number of his appointments did not have a history of spending too long in one place. Unlike Gatland and Woodward, Jones was not given to delegating, although one coach who stayed with him was Borthwick who provided the outline for his boss to colour in.
In football, Sir Alex Ferguson regularly changed his assistants at Manchester United, believing players benefited from a change in voice after a few years. Arsene Wenger preferred continuity at Arsenal, keeping one of his assistants for all of his 22 years at the club and changing the other once. What is different with England is that Borthwick envisaged his coaching team taking the team to Australia for the 2027 World Cup, results permitting. One of the many questions that has not been answered is how Walters is able to join up with Ireland ahead of the autumn internationals.
Did he not have a 12-month notice period? Or were his circumstances – he has a house in Ireland and his wife is Irish – such that he left with the RFU’s blessing? Did it receive compensation, which would be handy if it is to prise his successor from another team?
Does Jones have anything lined up? He played for Munster and Ireland and was with Walters at South Africa and England. Even if he hasn’t, he is unlikely to be short of suitors given his record and Ireland will have a short-term vacancy after the November internationals with Andy Farrell on sabbatical ahead of the Lions tour.
England charge high prices at Twickenham and owe supporters an explanation. Nothing has come out of HQ since the story of Jones’s departure broke: that it came on a Bank Holiday weekend is no excuse.
Jones’s decision, one that has not been acknowledged or denied officially, has come to reflect badly on Borthwick, but it may be that he is just caught up in it all. It is not much of a sell to potential successors to Walters and Jones and clubs will be fearing approaches for their coaches as the season gets underway.
What makes it all the more surprising is that they have not jumped from a ship caught in a storm. For the first time in three years England had a sense of direction but they face having to start over again. Why?
