England Now-great expectations?

At the end of November the whole sordid business of the umpteen reviews s on Englands recent performances will be History.
Since 1997,we have had 4 Head Coaches/Managers,in there first 15 games ALL had a better record than Sir Clive Woodwards.
It took several years to his side to become the Worlds best,and he was lucky enough to have a group of once in a generation
players around him.Hill,Back,Johnson,Wilkinson,Greenwood,Dawson to name a few.Stastically England are the fourth most
successful side in World Rugby at 57%,behind the All Blacks 75.4%,Boks 65.6% and France 57.6%.All 3 after SCW had around
a 55% win average.Maybe expectations are too high,only Wavell-Wakefield,Geoff cooke,Jack Rowell,and SCW have much better
stats over along period.It seem the in coming management Team will be a caretaker one for the 6Ns and possibly 2012 AI`s.
At A level and Youth level we are fine,only at Top level are we flawed,the removal of the Old Guard of Players means the
young guns .Will have there chance to step up,it would be naive to expect results immediatly or even much above the
national stats.Indications are Jim Mallinder will become Head Coach when his club contract expires,Ian Mc Geechan has been
mentioned as Manager.THAT would be an excellent starting place,Martin Johnson would [was?] a fine Coach at a practical
level,mentoring Forwards.He always lead by example,but perhaps was`nt great at putting itinto words.Many fine players
were poor coaches and the revese is also true.HAD he been given proper support he COULD have made a difference it is
the RFU`s shame he did`nt.Rob Andrews role should also come under the microscope 3 Coaches being sacked on his watch
is carelessness at least.YES,technically MJ was`nt sacked but chances are he would have been in the witch hunt.

Who ever takes over the MJ role i hope he has some experience in coaching or man management. I also hope that the RFU do not expect too mutch too soon.

Rob Andrew sacked 3 coaches on his watch, and yet they was appointed with his approval. So, if these coaches was given the go a head by Andrew then surely if they have failed, so has he.

So therefore he should go aswell.

Teflon will go with the review and if he doesn't the press will get him out on priniciple and though i am not a fan of media sponsored campaigns i look forward to his removal, he gives the RFU huge credibility issues and needs to jog on

Gatts, doesn't that show the basic weakness of the RFU at the moment?
How can someone like him continue to avoid blame without any reprocussions? Only through the weakness at the top.

Structure doc

It is designed to protect itself and the people who created it, it is a behemoth, a gargantuan feck up

If Andrew goes where does it stop, its the same principle in many organiations, when people feck up they are promoted in order to demonstrate that the organisation backs them and to show they didn't do anything wrong

Sqeeeeeeeeky can't go, there is no one left to sack him and he won't sack himself.

Once the new performance executive is installed, RA will finally be moved sideways as was always Steele's intention before he was forced out. As much as I dislike him, he does seem to have done a resonable job in bring on the acedemies and forging relations with the clubs which were in tatters in 2004.

As SCW stated, he does not have the ability to understand what makes a good England Manager/Head Coach, 3 sacked or forced out in 7 years is a testement to that.

No one with any ability will work with RA above them, so until they can remove him from any responsibility for the national side, we will get either a second rater or a temporary coach, neither of which will do England any good.

WELL-PAST-IT wrote:Sqeeeeeeeeky can't go, there is no one left to sack him and he won't sack himself.

Once the new performance executive is installed, RA will finally be moved sideways as was always Steele's intention before he was forced out. As much as I dislike him, he does seem to have done a resonable job in bring on the acedemies and forging relations with the clubs which were in tatters in 2004.

As SCW stated, he does not have the ability to understand what makes a good England Manager/Head Coach, 3 sacked or forced out in 7 years is a testement to that.No one with any ability will work with RA above them, so until they can remove him from any responsibility for the national side, we will get either a second rater or a temporary coach, neither of which will do England any good.

To be fair to Rob, Ashton was widely heralded when he was picked...as was Robinson for his involvment with the WC winning team, and MJ's appointment was hugely liked aswell. So has he actually made bad appointments?

2 sackings, (one atrociously handled) and a forced to go before...... show that his judgement is poor. That we all applauded the appointments is not relevant, if we had the skill sets to do the job, rather than opinions, we would be doing it not him.

He was appointed as he was supposed to have the knowledge and skills to oversee the management of the England team, it became apparent that he didn't and he was moved sideways into a position that was in my opinion more suitable, as I stated I think he has done a reasonable job in all the other areas. With the numbers of young players England have, anybody half competent could bring through a lot of good players, the laws of averages state that.

It was only the buffoonery at the RFU that brought him back to the position of overseeing the International squad. Any caretaker should be given his head free of interference from RA or anybody else as should the eventual manager, if you have to take the fall if things go wrong, you should have all the responsibility for the running, selection and everything else associated with the squad.

That the appointments were generally applauded shows that in general people have no idea will make a good coach.
I know I thought that it was a dumb idea to appoint MJ. But then I was confused about what his job was supposed to be. In NZ the Manager is pretty low down on the list of importance. Henry was headcoach not manager.
I thought it was pretty dumb for Umanga to try to coach Toulon as well.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/nov/23/england-world-cup-fiasco-leaked-report

"Among the evidence gathered by the Rugby Players' Association, who received feedback from 90% of the players, was a complaint by one player about a colleague's reaction in the dressing room – "There's £35,000 just gone down the toilet" – following the quarter-final defeat to France in Auckland. The player concerned said the response "made me sick. Money shouldn't even come into a player's mind."

It has also been confirmed that the RFU was held to ransom by the players before the tournament began, with the squad threatening to boycott the eve-of-departure dinner. "It is very disappointing that a senior group, led by Lewis Moody, disputed the level of payment for the World Cup squad, which led to meetings with RFU executives," Andrew said in a report leaked to the Times. "I believe this led to a further unsettling of the squad just before departure, which included a threat by the squad not to attend the World Cup send-off dinner at Twickenham. It suggested that some of the senior players were more focused on money than getting the rugby right.""

Didn't Johnson lead a strike over pay a number of years back? Then Welsh players threaten a strike during the Six Nations a few years after that?

well with the record profits the RFU just announced i would assume they'd be offering the players fair wack anyway...