A new way for England…

Incredibly bored at work as I’m having a bit of downtime after a crazy period.  Very bored of the European rugby discussions.  Also getting a bit frustrated by the stop start nature of the international season and how every time England get together it seems we are back to square one in terms of sorting out our team.  Not saying this would ever happen but if I had my way…

- We’d pull the PRL teams out of any European competition to make some room in the calendar
- Create a ‘club’ England a bit like cricket where the Elite squad is contracted to England and only plays club rugby when it suits the team
- Play more internationals if possible.  Defo move to 4 each Autumn with another home international before each summer tour.
- To partially make up for the lost European fixtures in the league create 4 groups of 3 teams who each once a year put out a representative side to play a friendly against England.  Ideally I’d say two of these games before the Autumn internationals where we are probably at our most rusty.  One before the Six nations and one before the home international pre the Summer tour.
- Have at least two games a year against developing international sides
- This should result in England playing a minimum of 15 tests and 4 ‘friendlies’ a year.  Should still mean that the Elite squad can be released for a minimum 11 club games a year and not be playing more than 30 fixtures in a year (Think the cap at the moment is 32?).
- If the RFU can’t generate enough revenue to compensate the clubs for the loss of European rugby consider growing the PRL to 14 clubs, having a knock out competition or some sort of annual invitational tournament.

Club rugby is incredibly important to the English game and I don’t want to lose it.  Much as I love watching the Heineken Cup I think something has got to give and I’m not convinced that the benefits of playing in it are that great.  Take Wales and Ireland.  Ireland have dominated the competition with largely home grown players for years but has that resulted in an improvement in their national team?  Conversely Wales have consistently underperformed yet have thrived to an extent at the international game.  For England to say it’s a mixed bag is probably being generous.  

Anyway I just want a more focused approach to making the national team the priority.  I want the players to have more time together.  I want the elite players welfare to be managed centrally.  I want the team to be a more cohesive unit by playing together far more regularly.  I also want to win the WSOP but I imagine, none of these things are going to happen.  This has killed 10 mins of my day though so not all bad…

Problem is elite players are club property...

Maybe a global season would adress a lot of issues though;

Play SH teams throughout April, May/June 6N, head south for July and run the club season September to March?

My hypothetical would already require a hell of a lot of cooperation between the RFU and the PRL so I don't think the contracting of players would be the big problem. It's already happened successfully in cricket.

As for the global season you suggest it's still wouldn't address some of the issues as you have a huge gap then with no internationals. Despite the success of the club game internationals are still king so I want more of them. You could also use the extra games to spread the fixtures around the country i.e. keep the current 'sell out' games at twickers but move the rest around the country.

As I say this is all pie in the sky stuff but if you took a blank sheet of paper approach and said, 'design us a system that will create the best possible international team' it wouldn't be the current one. Probably wouldn't be the one I suggested either to be fair!

I dont think theres anything wrong with the current England set up / league etc

Clubs are bringing youngsters through in their droves now thanks to the financial incentive...and we can see that this is slowly starting to help the England team itself.

Only questions that really come up is about the actual managers and coaches themselves. I suspect a big defeat off NZ and poor showing in the 6n (and i mean a continued lack of attacking play / style) might have the locals getting a bit restless...

GeordieFalcon wrote:I dont think theres anything wrong with the current England set up / league etc

Clubs are bringing youngsters through in their droves now thanks to the financial incentive...and we can see that this is slowly starting to help the England team itself.

Only questions that really come up is about the actual managers and coaches themselves. I suspect a big defeat off NZ and poor showing in the 6n (and i mean a continued lack of attacking play / style) might have the locals getting a bit restless...

Not if we keep winning.

Lets be honest our attacking play has been poor, but we are outpowering NH teams in certain areas and still putting points on the board.

We were beaten by Wales who highlighted some of our biggest problems, but we still won every other 6N game, and every 6N home game which will keep the Twickers brigade grumbling contently into their Pimms.

At least England are scoring tries now. They might have won matches in the 6N but 1 try in 4 6N matches paints a very sad story.

With such extreme levels of inconsistency from the AB match last year to now tomorrows ma\tch will give England an idea of where its really at.