England must find answers …and fast
NICK CAIN
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THE coaching churn that was a canker during the Eddie Jones‘ tenure as England head coach has now spread to Steve Borthwick’s regime. The most worrying sign of this follows the bombshell decision this week by Felix Jones, a double World Cup-winning assistant coach with South Africa, to leave the England set-up after only seven months.
The bid by the Irishman, whose credentials as an talented attack/defence strategist have taken him to the top of the coaching ladder, to extricate himself from his RFU contract so soon is a body blow to Borthwick’s attempts to turn England back into a leading international force.
The blow was even more damaging because it came so soon after strength & conditioning specialist Aled Walters walked through the Twickenham exit straight into a job with Ireland. This suggests that unless he had a break clause with England, the IRFU bought him out of his RFU contract.
Walters’ timing could not have been worse from a Red Rose perspective. The influential performance guru of the 2019 South African World Cup winning side – who is a close to Jones since their days at Munster – left his England job just two days after it was announced that Tom Tombleson, his fellow strength & conditioning colleague, had been released following a pre-season Borthwick reshuffle.
The departure of the now unemployed Tombleson, who had been a popular member of the England support staff for a decade, had a domino effect. With Walters and Jones following-on, the three-man coaching exodus in under three weeks in August rocked Twickenham to the core.
It raises man-management questions that need answering by not only Borthwick, but also, just as importantly, whoever he reports to. If it is the same “no-names” RFU reporting chain that tied itself in knots during the Eddie Jones era, and involved chief executive Bill Sweeney, board member Jonathan Webb, and performance director Conor O’Shea, getting those answers is highly unlikely.
There were indicators that all was not running smoothly before the Felix Jones, Walters, and Tombleson departures, when Kevin Sinfield was downgraded from his post as defence coach to skills coach in January. This was followed by a public statement from Sinfield that he intended to leave the England squad after the summer tour to Japan and New Zealand.
It leaves Borthwick with a high-profile skills/defence coach who may or may not be departing, and two inexperienced remainers in attack coach Richard Wigglesworth and scrum coach Tom Harrison.
The other coach on the RFU’s books is New Zealander Andrew Straw-bridge. The former Waikato Chiefs coach and All Blacks consultant was brought in as an England consultant during the 2024 Six Nations, before being given a full-time assistant coach/coaching adviser role before the summer tour, to cover Sinfield moving on.
“The three-man coaching exodus in under three weeks rocked Twickenham to its core”
There is speculation – as there will be in the absence of any explanation by the RFU – that a significant contributor to the revolving door in the England coaching camp is not just Borthwick’s austere, demanding work environment, but also crossed wires on job description/allocation, and an underlying sense of instability.
When it was announced that Felix Jones was joining England following South Africa’s 2023 World Cup double, this column raised questions about a world champion attack coach being allocated the defence job by England – especially when Borthwick made Wigglesworth, a relative international novice, his attack coach.
It would be reasonable to expect that if Jones agreed initially to equip England with an effective blitz defence based on his Springbok experience – which he has done successfully – he would then want to revert to demonstrating his world class credentials in attack.
There is no clarity over whether Jones opted to depart because he would not countenance politicking for the attack post. Asimilar shroud of mist hangs over Walters’ decision to transfer his services to Ireland with such speed that he will be part of their Autumn and 2025 Six Nations preparations.
However, it is fair to assume that the opportunity to work alongside Andy Farrell for the Six Nations champions, and also put his credentials forward for the 2025 Lions tour, of which Farrell is head coach, was too much for Walters to resist.
Whether Borthwick was cool on the idea of either the Welshman – who is a performance coach with a reputation for creating a close relationship with players – or Jones, who was also well liked within the England squad, putting their names forward for the Lions tour to Australia, rather than with England to Argentina, is unknown.
However, the overtures to Walters from Farrell, and from Ireland’s new performance director, David Humphreys, appears to be what he wanted to hear.
Another factor is that Jones, 37, and Walters have Irish wives and strong family connections in Ireland. Jones’ young family live in Dublin, and he has commuted from there to London to fulfil his England duties, in the same way he did to attend Springbok camps in South Africa.
Having a job nearer home might therefore be appealing to Jones, but, amid reports that England are considering asking him to see out the remaining year of his RFU contract, it is notable that, unlike Walters, so far he has not been signed by Ireland.
It is also plausible that Walters – who turned England into a fitter side in just over a year – did not find the prospect of haggling with Premiership directors of rugby over the S&C implications of England’s new hybrid contracts very appealing. IRFU central contracts are more straightforward when it comes to managing players.
In the end, what we can deduce for sure is that neither Jones nor Walters wanted to continue their England journeys, and that their premature departures have left Steve Borthwick with his coaching crew in disarray – and no doubt feeling that he has been left in the lurch, and wondering why.
