Bracken: when you were interviewed after the game against Fiji you said you didn’t know you’d scored the bonus-point try—that was a strange thing to say…
Billy: not at all. None of us knew bonus points were part of this world cup. No one had told us.
[…]
Bracken: what’s Stuart Lancaster like to work with as a coach?
BillyV: I don’t know.
Bracken: what do you mean?
BillyV: Stuart doesn’t coach the team, Andy Farrell does. I’ve never been coached by Stuart.
Campo, butting in: what effect has that had on the way the team plays?
Billy: he makes us play like a rugby league team.
(Campo then goes off on one about England’s terrible style of play is and how the RFU should just bite the bullet and hire an experienced international coach. To be fair, he’s absolutely spot on with that).
[…]
Campo: so what do you think about England picking Sam Burgess?
BillyV: it’s been disruptive. The whole squad is unhappy about it.
Bracken: WHAT? Why?
BillyV: Luther Burrell earned his place in the RWC squad and Sam didn’t. Luther should have been picked, not Sam.
[…]
Bracken: and how are you enjoying playing under Chris Robshaw?
BillyV: *shrugs shoulders, sips beer, says nothing*
That is some major shit right there.
The source was originally a poster on the Planet Rugby forums, although the post was deleted and I took it from a copy posted up on the Quins board. Since then, a number of people have said they've talked with people who were there and confirmed it, including Stuart Barnes. Now it's pretty incredible stuff and they could have been misled, but equally it's the sort of story that no one's going to put their name to it, so I'm still in two minds about it. The important thing to me though is that, just like prime ministers and pigs heads, whether it happened is almost secondary to everyone going "Well, yeah, that sounds like him all right."
Andy Farrell that is, not Billy Vunipola. That the account mentions Vunipola drinking when he doesn't is dubious in fact, and it's really hard to believe any professional sportsman would be so rash as to do this, even if they were so drunk they though Nickleback were good. Many a man and woman make their living from people being unbelievably stupid though, and most of those I talked rugby to online were joking about Farrell telling Lancaster what to do a good year before this even happened. I don't know whether the Vunipola rumour is true but I do believe Farrell has a very big influence on how things are done and this has been detrimental.
The logic behind this is simple. Look at England and ask yourself who you think Andy Farrell pushed for in selection meetings, then do the same for Mike Catt. There are a lot more defensively solid players who fit the model that Farrell established at Saracens then there are creative attack players in the mould favoured by Catt. Barritt sticks around, Eastmond gets the brush-off very quickly. Burgess is parachuted into the team, Slade carries tackle bags. Wigglesworth's boot is in, Care's running game is out. And so on and so on. It's a reasonable inference that one coach has a louder voice than the other.
The pack also shows Farrell's fingerprints - a surplus of big, very fit men who make for an impressive defensive line, rugby league style. So what if they may lack breakdown skills? They're not there to be in the breakdown, as this analysis from G&G rugby shows. Having spent a lot of time rewatching England matches simply to stare at the rucks, I can say their numbers sound right. England stay out of the breakdown in defence so everyone's in the line. We're not the only country to use that tactic, but no one else seems quite so reluctant to stray and it does help explain the indifference to the claims of Armitage and Kvesic ahead of Robshaw. Their breakdown skills weren't required and I would suggest that covers all of them. That it wasn't just England looking bad at the breakdown because of Robshaw, but also Robshaw looking bad at the breakdown because of England, with maybe more of the latter than the former. That is an article for another day however. I also suspect Farrell of being partially responsible for the omission of big chunky set-piece loving forwards, such as everyone from Bath, and the demand for England forwards to slim down and get fitter. Only suspect mind; but I would love to hear Rowntree speaking frankly about the situation.
It's quite a jump however to get from there, with Andy Farrell likely a dominant voice among the assistants, to Farrell being the big dog overall like the rumour suggests and people have been joking. To a large extent its sheer gallows humour and frustration but there is a bit more to it. For one thing, given how much time Stuart Lancaster spends on PR and other management issues, it would not be surprising if the coaches had a big impact; Lancaster believe he spends only 20% of his time coaching. When he tried to lure Wayne Smith into the England camp (it's a crying shame he didn't), there were suggestions in the press that Lancaster would be more of a Director of Rugby while Smith was head coach. It seems plausible that Lancaster perhaps doesn't want to do everything associated with being head coach and probable that he doesn't have time to.
If there was something of a vacancy in the structure due to Lancaster's workload, does it matter if Andy Farrell filled it? I mean, obviously it does, because we just got knocked out of our own World Cup while shipping a record defeat to Australia at Twickenham, but is there anything wrong with the idea in principle? Trusted assistant filling in for overworked boss, that's how the world's meant to work before you remember most people are incompetents, right? I think the principle is sound but the execution is weaker than Matt Dawson's comedy skills and that for me comes down to two things, both of them pretty worrying even if he's just an assistant coach and there's nothing to these rumours.
The first is that Andy Farrell simply ain't big enough to be the big dog in this town. He started as a skills coach in summer 2009, was promoted to first team coach end of 2010, then left Saracens to join England summer 2012. You look at the experience gained by men such as Cheika, Gatland, Schmidt, Jones - then you look at Farrell - and you realise that in coaching terms, he is the drummer boy to their hardened veterans. They'd probably refuse to share their brandy with him as he's too young. I'm sure he's learned a lot very quickly from being in international rugby, including the Lions tour. I'm sure there are aspects of rugby he knows as well as anyone. That doesn't put you in big dog territory though. I'm not sure it even really qualifies you for working with the national team at all when you look at some of the guys working in other teams, but it certainly doesn't qualify him to be calling all the shots.
The second is that if England are going to do things the Andy Farrell way, then what on earth is the point of Mike Catt? And if there is a point to Mike Catt and his approach, then why give so much importance to Andy Farrell, whose approach seems completely incompatible? It is neither man's fault that they have been put together and no two coaches will agree about everything, but for there to be such a divergence is damaging, particularly if one of the men has more pull than other. If they had equal voices, then perhaps it would work. They don't though. Farrell's voice is louder than Catt's - maybe louder than Lancaster's - and Farrell does not have the breadth of experience and knowledge needed to say all that must be said.
The result of this appears to be a tug of war over what players the team needs and how they should be playing. The result of that tug of war has been incoherent selections, unbalanced team units, and seemingly ever-mutating ideology and indecision. That this is happening does say quite clearly that Lancaster isn't listening to everything Farrell says, or we'd never deviate from a Rugby League defence and pressure as the cornerstone of everything, but it also says that Lancaster isn't listening equally to all ideas all of the time to meld them into a harmonious whole. He is flitting from voice to voice, but mainly listening to Farrell.
This method has not worked. It's fallen just short since 2012 (bar the one time the All Blacks had norovirus) and now it has not so much fallen short as collapsed unconscious on the start line. The paramedics and stewards are clustered around the body trying to work out what's happened and what to do while all of the other runners just keep on running. I know everyone knows this but I will keep repeating in ever more colourful ways as a coping mechanism and also to remind us all just how totes fucking abysmal this was and how it can't be business as usual.
I did not write this solely as a hatchet job on Farrell, although it's basically been one to date. I mean, sure, I think he's a big part of us going in the wrong direction and some of the rumours imply he's an even bigger part than I thought - but the issue is not necessarily Farrell himself so much as his position in the machine. If someone is handed a job they're not really qualified to do, it's not totally fair to blame them when it goes wrong, and back in 2012 Farrell apparently had to be persuaded to take on a temporary position for the 6N. As a defence coach and motivator under a strong experienced head coach - as he was for the Lions - he's well qualified. He has the potential to reach the top as a general coach if he is willing to keep learning, he will probably end up a top defence coach whatever happens (although he might like to learn how to incorporate the breakdown).
That is the future though. Back in the here and now, Andy Farrell as the pseudo-head coach he appears to be does not work.
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