Rob Andrew disects England RWC 2015 performance (AKA Squeaky lambasts Bomber)

First topic message reminder :

Rob Andrew has a new book to sell and details of the chapter on England's disastrous RWC 2015 campaign is in today's Telegraph.  A quote from this:

"It seemed to me that we froze: that the pressure was too great for those at the sharp end to bear. How else to explain the nonsense at the end of the Wales game, when we turned down a penalty shot that would have drawn the game in favour of a line-out call that was risky at best and spellbindingly dumb at worst? On this subject, I’m about as old school as it gets: in Test rugby, you take your points as and when they arise. Always. End of. Finish.

Instead, we were treated to a slow-motion car crash – a scrambling of the decision-making process, an unravelling of everything we had worked for since that Six Nations camp in Leeds in the cold early weeks of 2012. At that moment, our chances were dust. The valedictory capitulation against the Australians a week later was entirely predictable."

Amongst the revelations are the fact that England nearly signed Wayne Smith as coach; that Rob Andrew saw the recruitment and selection of Sam Burgess as a disaster; that Stuart Lancaster made mistake after mistake.

I don't think there is much there that hasn't been fully discussed, the question is should a former RFU director of professional rugby put the knife into a still working coach - is this a betrayal in the same vein as Sean O'Brien, or do we welcome open and honest feedback?  Rob Andrew has never been popular with 'the great unwashed', does this just cement the opinion?

yappysnap wrote:

cascough wrote:

propdavid_london wrote:Exactly GF - thought their fitness was supposed to be right up there.  Now they weren't shouting about it like the Welsh camp and all the cryogenic tubs and all that - But I had thought that they were all considered to be in peak conditioning.  
Unless that's just another thing that management got wrong in the run up to the WC - too many games or over-conditioning!

It may just have been aerobic fitness. Tom Wood commented in the run up to the World Cup that he had never done so much running. Perhaps in the loose open games we were fitter and did manage to outlast the opposition. I can remember post game, against Wales, plenty commenting on how knackered Wales looked and how spritely the England players looked at the end. But to be honest, I don't remember the game itself. Maybe the games where we struggled for fitness were games where the opposition had managed to make us make lots of tackles, or scrum and maul. I really don't know.

Eddie Jones has made a big thing about intensity in his training sessions. Short and intense. Different kind of fitness perhaps? I dunno.

Just going by what I saw, it looked like all the players had lost weight for the RWC, Wood in particular looked lean, which isn't something you really want from your forwards in particular. I read they'd done a heck of a lot of cardio, and they did seem very aerobically fit every game, but across Bombers tenure we lost the power game to most other top teams.

You can be both, look at Sarries. Huge yet incredible workrate.

I think Saracens have utilised Barritt more effectively than England did in that RWC.

Barritt at times has acted almost like an auxiliary flanker in the centres for Sarries, whilst for England, things were all too stodgy.

Often I've seen Barritt being used as an extra man either when Saracens have gone down to 14 men in the scrum or to help push the maul over the line for a try.

Barritt's dynamism for Saracens, is very much in contrast to his lethargic performances in the RWC.



England's pack in the 2015 RWC was not particularly powerful - when you have the likes of T.Youngs,Parling and Wood you can't claim to be that!


England under Jones have much more ballast in the pack.

Also obviously in the Wales game, England lost both B.Vunipola and B.Youngs to injure and lacked a plan B.

England since the mid 1970`s had coaches like Geoff Cooke,Jack Rowell,SCW,all who
had 71 or greater percentage wins.Many of those had great or good players many
of who were passed down to the next coach.
SCW was the first to have the money no object facilities given him,it took him nearly
eight years to build his squad.He took a lot of losses on his way to building his side
to the peaks it achieved.When he left the cupboard was bare for whatever reason
the 2007 RWC final couldn't hide that.
His successors Robinson and Ashton both had better win /loss stats when they were
sacked.Martin Johnson a great player/captain but no Coaching experience at any
level.Was making progress pre2011 but come RWC it was safety first style/selections
Lancaster.
Then Academy and A team Coach was elected as a caretaker Coach,the players he
selected.Are mostly the same players in the current squads he identified,during his
tenier.He had four years as.lets not mince words shared 4 6Ns titles,a triple crown,
a win  against several SH sides including NZ.Plus a respectable 61percent win record
v all comers.
RWCs cause jerk reactions there was no reason to expect England would win in 2015
except the media.Slamming Sam was all over the media,as i recall it the Wales match.
An injury break caused loss of momentum,Farrell came on then was yellow carded.
We are so used to the jargon take the points,go for the 7 as if it was a matter of
course it can be achieved.A difficult side line kick,or a lineout? then perhaps an
easier penalty or drop goal chance.
When he left Eddie Jones again had the money no option facility,an inherited squad
plus cash to bring short term specelists like Ella and George Smith.
Lancaster thru injuries and loss of form wasn`t able to establish his best midfield,
he`s not alone in that.[see AB`s 2006-7,2015-17]
The Teflon kid putting the boot into him is not called for especially as technically
he should have given him the same facilities EJ enjoys.

You misremeber as Farrell started he wales game. And Farrell was sin binned vs Australia.

Your right of course sorry,but the rest of the piece stands Lancaster doesn't deserve
to be shafted that way.

Coaches pre-SCW had better win percentages in part because they played the SH sides less frequently. It was Woodward who established the principle that to beat the Southern Hemisphere you have to play them regularly and insisted on more autumn games and longer summer tours.

Robinson, Ashton and Johnson failed to move things on in different ways. Robinson was an excellent Head Coach, but a terrible selector and DOR, and failed to innovate tactically.

Ashton actually got close to achieving something Eddie is working on at the moment: players capable of making their own decisions. But he went about it in the wrong way and in the process lost the dressing room. It's a shame - in many ways he was ahead of his time.

Johnson was building towards an interesting style... then his team got humped in Ireland and he fell back on more conservative tactics and 2003-era selections.

Lancaster's path was essentially the exact opposite of Johnson's but in the end failed in a similar way. He was forced to clear out the old guard, and did a lot to select and build a squad that was a bit short on experience in 2015 but will be fully baked in 2019 (as Eddie has acknowledged). But rather than be too conservative at the RWC, he rolled the dice several times and none of them came off.

The Johnson and Lancaster experiences have convinced me that no team should go to the RWC with a coach who hasn't already been through the whole cycle as an international coach before. The RFU should look for coaches who have had that experience either as lead coach of a smaller nation or as assistant coach to a minor one.

I'd be very uncomfortable if the RFU picked Baxter or McCall direct from club roles to replace Eddie. I would see Borthwick, Farrell or O'Shea as better candidates.

_Partially true Poorfour ,some of the time was SH sides were in decline thru 70`s,
and in NZ/SA case in decline 1991,1998-2000[nz]Australia were top in this period.
Eddie Jones gets the kudos for helping Jake Whites victory in RWC,Bob Mitchells
in the the SCWs campaigns ignored.
Who`s to say given the funding EJ enjoys and with hindsight Lancaster wouldn't
have been as successful too.Especially as people were saying how poor SA/Aus
were post 2015.

emack2 wrote:_Bob Mitchells in the the SCWs campaigns ignored...

If you mean John Mitchell, then his role certainly wasn't ignored. When he went back to Waikato, Dallaglio and Nigel Melville both expressed disappointment that the RFU hadn't got their act together in time to retain him.

Still, Andy Robinson stepped in as assistant coach and did well in that role. Mitchell left after the inaugral Six Nations in 2000, and there was a lot of development still to come. Probably a bigger loss was Brian Ashton, who left in 2002. England's attacking play came on leaps and bounds while he was involved, and noticeably stagnated after he left. It was still ahead of the opposition but the gap narrowed.

emack2 wrote:_Partially true Poorfour ,some of the time was SH sides were in decline thru 70`s,
and in NZ/SA case in decline 1991,1998-2000[nz]Australia were top in this period.
Eddie Jones gets the kudos for helping Jake Whites victory in RWC,Bob Mitchells
in the the SCWs campaigns ignored.
Who`s to say given the funding EJ enjoys and with hindsight Lancaster wouldn't
have been as successful too.Especially as people were saying how poor SA/Aus
were post 2015.

I wasn't making any observation about the relative quality of SH sides - just that pre-SCW NH coaches didn't play them as often, so win or lose their win percentages are dominated by 5N performances (which were particularly good for England in the 1990s). From what I can remember (and there don't seem to be good records online), it wasn't common to play 4 autumn tests and regularly have games against the big 3 - typically you would only play one of them each autumn. I remember Woodward insisting that the RFU arranged tests with SA, Aus and NZ every year, which was a huge change at the time.

What's your source for the idea that Lancaster had less funding than Eddie? It's probable that Eddie is personally paid more, possible that he is spending more, but I have never heard that Lancaster was constrained in what he could spend. I am in the minority who would have been happy for Lancaster to continue in the role provided he was given a more experienced mentor, like Eddie or John Mitchell (something he probably should have had from the outset). But I can see why he had to go, and I am very happy with the coach we've now got.

For what it's worth, Eddie is given more credit for his role with White than Mitchell with Woodward for two reasons. Firstly, Mitchell was only with England 1997-2000. He was actually All Black coach in 2003. So, unlike Eddie, he wasn't involved in the RWC campaign itself (and by definition had a less successful 2003 RWC than either Eddie or anyone actually in Woodward's coaching team). Secondly, Mitchell was 3 years into his coaching career when he joined the England group and had not been a national coach at that point. Eddie had been coaching for 13 years, including 5 years as Australia Head Coach where he won the Tri-Nations and got within a drop goal of winning the RWC. He had more experience than Jake White and was in a more senior role advising the Head Coach on tactics and the tournament rather than as an assistant.

Guardian interview with Andrew

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/oct/22/rob-andrew-rugby-rfu-england-interview

The game is getting worse, not better, and it cannot continue like that because the impact on the sport will be enormous...

Go down that road for long enough and you damage the game. I am not being alarmist: I don’t want it to happen. I just don’t know what the answer is. Players are now incredible athletes and go at a hell of a pace at each other with a lot of force. The intensity never drops and what is not focused on enough is that it is not a 15-man game, which it was years ago, when all 15 stayed on the field and there was a bit of room in the last 20 minutes because everyone was knackered. Now, it is a 23-man game and at the tired point more than half a team comes on fresh so there is no drop in intensity level. That is not what rugby was designed for.

Rugby wasn't designed it evolved. It should keep doing so, we can all chose to play or not.

Whole interview here between Brian Moore & Rob Andrew. Andrew gives a fair account of himself, not least in setting the scene at the RFU, and how poorly organized it was. It's a podcast around an hour long.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2017/11/27/brian-moores-full-contacti-hope-sam-burgess-wins-us-rugby-league/