Borthwick struggling to find unifying spirit
CALL it a “Sue Gray moment” in rugby boots – yet another one, to go with all the other instances of England‘s back-room operation elbowing its way to the front of the public debate. There must be a book in it somewhere. “50 Shades of Gray: A Modern History of Red Rose Coaching Cock-Uppery” would fly off the shelves.
The latest saga began with Twickenham pushing for a reverse job-share deal with the Saracens performance director Phil Morrow, right, securing his services on a part-time basis that would allow him to continue working with the former European champions. It ended with a majority of the North Londoners’ top-tier rivals crash-tackling the idea into touch. So far, so predictable.
Why predictable? Because in the union game, there is nothing new under the sun. Spool back a quarter of a century and we find Premiership coaches muttering angrily about the trailblazing defence strategist Phil Larder’s decision to deepen his association with Leicester, very much the Saracens of the time, while playing a significant role in Clive Woodward’s international set-up.
We might also point to the subsequent failure to agree terms with Shaun Edwards, who didn’t get the England gig because HE was the one who wanted to split his time between club and country; the peculiar kerfuffle over Andy Farrell’s position after a successful Six Nations stint under Stuart Lancaster in 2012; and the embarrassing running commentaries, spread over decades, on attempts to sprinkle some southern hemisphere stardust over Twickers in the form of Graham Henry, Nick Mallett and Wayne Smith.
Piecing together the optimum England coaching team has proved the devil’s own job. Woodward surrounded himself with his chosen ones between the 1999 and 2003 global gatherings, famously reaping the full reward, and Lancaster stuck with his staff for an entire World Cup cycle once Farrell had reverse-ferreted his way back into the inner sanctum, but these were the exceptions. Andy Robinson and Brian Ashton had their assistants imposed upon them while Eddie Jones went through a cast of thousands during his time in the capital. By comparison, Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now with a skeleton staff.
“England coaches wield influence but full control is absolutely not part of the package”
So it continues. As far as we know, the current head coach Steve Borthwick is not a believer in constructive chaos: he came to the job looking like stability made flesh, a forward defensive shot in human form, a fixed point in a flux-plagued sporting environment. Yet his stewardship of the Test side has been marked by sudden, damaging departures, made worse by prolonged confusion over the precise role of the high-profile Kevin Sinfield.
The Morrow plan was never much of a runner – as Brian Moore, the England hooker of yore, pointed out with customary clarity in his newspaper column, all the clubs who weren’t Saracens had every right to be alarmed at an arrangement with potential for conflicts of interest stitched into its very fabric – so you have to wonder how the architects of the scheme thought they could swing it.
You didn’t have to question Morrow’s motives to recognise the thing as a nonsense. Expecting him to wipe his mind clean of important data accessed on England duty, preferably in the time it took him to drive from Bagshot to St Albans, would have been as fanciful as an Old Bailey judge ordering the jury to forget everything they had read, watched and heard in the media ahead of a major trial.
If the England hierarchy are as convinced of Morrow’s value as they say they are, they should put their hands in their pockets and buy him out of his club contract. Which might not be the worst move, given that Borthwick’s latest pick as defence coach, the admirable Joe El Abd, will be doing his stuff on a part-time basis until he leaves the French second division club Oyonnax at season’s end, while Sinfield’s new deal is one of those in-and-out jobs, allowing him to busy himself with “other commitments”.
What does all this tell us about the state of professional union here in Blighty? It tells us that while a brand-spanking-new eight-year agreement has just been signed by the Rugby Football Union and Premier Rugby, there is still plenty of scope for a continuation of the “forever war” that broke out almost 30 years ago. Country may speak the same language as club, but they are rarely on the same page.
England coaches always wield muscle and influence, but full control is absolutely not part of the package: even Woodward learned that lesson when, after using his formidable powers of persuasion to grab most of what he needed for most of his tenure, he overplayed his hand with the Twickenham grandees and ran into a brick wall of double-breasted pinstripery.
So ended a rare period of something resembling harmony at the top end of the game. Borthwick may yet be the man to recapture the unifying spirit, but as it stands right now, he can’t even find himself a full-time workforce. Makes you wonder, eh?
