It's been a day and a bit since Australia turned Twickenham into a metaphorical ground zero. I am sometimes flippant about these things, and sometimes fatalistic, but there is a tiny part of me that will never get over how badly English Rugby has blown this opportunity. That's probably not a healthy level of emotional investment but one that I think a lot of people share. For the most part though, I am ready to move on and consider what may happen next as the cycle of hope and delusion starts again, so this will be the first in a series of articles looking at what went wrong and what fixes might be implemented. The first step in any such process is to try and describe the problem to begin with.
So.
The problem is England's 23 was incapable of beating either Wales or Australia on the day at Twickenham. This is because the coaches failed to prepare the players adequately and the players failed to execute.when on the pitch. When it mattered most, they weren't good enough. Both coaches and players were there because of other people though.
The players were there because of the coaches and also because of the English system. These were the best, give or take, available. Some of them started the game early and went through the whole gamut of minis, school, club, academy, age grade, Premiership, Saxons, England. Others came through different channels. Opinions are divided on the efficacy of England's player production but there are few systems so strong they cannot be improved and a stronger system would offer stronger players.
The coaches are there because they have been appointed by the RFU. Stuart Lancaster was appointed on the recommendation of a panel of Sir Ian McGeechan, Conor O'Shea, Rob Andrew and Richard Hill. There is some confusion over whether Lancaster appointed his lieutenants or whether the RFU did but either way, Lancaster has always appeared happy with them. In 2012 they were handed contracts until January 2016. In October 2014, they were awarded extensions until 2020; an unprecedented show of faith.
In short, pretty much everything about English elite rugby stands accused. I would dismiss that sentence myself as kneejerk melodrama if we hadn't been looking at similar problems for twelve years. In that time, we have not produced one player worthy of rugby's hall of fame and the most experienced head coach to be appointed was Andy Robinson with three years at Bath. There has been improvements in some aspects of English rugby in that time but the whole still looks somewhat short of the potential Sir Clive Woodward so briefly fulfilled. As the joke goes, the correct term for an Englishman in the quarter finals is now 'referee'; European club rugby has been similarly chastising.
It is tempting to call on the RFU to do a root and branch review, but one suspects they will root through minutiae and branch out into areas where they can praise themselves. Even assuming they are interested in doing it properly and appoint some outsiders, it would seem to be too giant a task to be completed prior to appointing a new coach. They will review the World Cup, then Ian Ritchie will make a decision on whether to break the contracts he offered, hopefully with the aid of someone who knows rugby more intimately. Possibly the same people who suggested Lancaster in the first place; some of them, I believe, responsible for Johnson too. One of the reasons I would back Lancaster leaving is he does not appear to be learning; the RFU could be accused of the same failing.
As I go through this series, I'll be making throwing out a number of ideas about what seems right to me. I will start with a few here. The first is that we should go and hire a guy who definitely absolutely knows how to be a head coach. The second is that, if possible this man is stuck on a two year contract, just in case it's another RFU special, although I accept top coaches might demand four years and that we might have to follow.
And last but definitely not least, is that the RFU looks very hard at how their part in running the England team and change as necessary, because they are the only constant in an operation that constantly goes wrong, and has just blown one of the greatest opportunities in English Rugby ever.
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