Even in these embattled times, with so many threats to what we once knew as the ways and wonders of this professional sporting life, there still appears to be one constant: every rugby player in this northern part of the oval globe wants to be a Lion. That’s not only players but coaches too.
As Eddie Jones reflects in his autobiography: “I have for a long time wanted to coach the British & Irish Lions. I still hope that, one day, I might get the opportunity.”
The Lions still have that draw. Like a calling from on high. So why, then, when the Lions coaching line-up is announced tomorrow, will there not be one single member of the England coaching team on it?
Not one single member of the England coaching staff was invited to join the party. And not only were they not in the first-choice line-up, they weren’t in the second-choice line-up either.
It hasn’t been an easy week for Warren Gatland, the head coach, because though the Lions still has a pulling power, it is becoming increasingly hard to unpick coaches from their full-time jobs. For players, whether or not you go is barely even an issue; it is pretty much down to whether or not you get invited. For coaches, though, it is not so binary.
Advertisement
For varying reasons, then, Gatland lost three of his first-choice coaches last week. Andy Farrell, Steve Borthwick and Graham Rowntree — all three of them experienced Lions tourists — were all desperate to go. All three of them, however, found that they had no option but to withdraw.
Gatland then turned to his reserves. Instead of Farrell, he has asked Steve Tandy, the Scotland defence coach, to join the party. Instead of Rowntree, he has approached Robin McBryde, the Welshman who is forwards coach at Leinster.
These two appointments will be confirmed tomorrow. There may be others on the coaching ticket of whom we are unaware. But not one of them will be from the coaching teams of Jones’s England. England’s coaches were neither first nor second-choice picks.
At some point, the management at England and the RFU must therefore ask themselves the question: why? Why are our coaches not making the cut?
The England rugby team — the players — get judged on scoreline and performance every time they play. There is no such objective appraisal for the coaches. Pretty much the only time that any public assessment is made of the different coaching panels across the four Lions unions is once every four years when the Lions head coach decrees which he thinks are the best and would like to go on tour with him.
Advertisement
Note here that it is not that Gatland didn’t want English coaches — because Farrell, Borthwick and Rowntree are all English. Indeed, you might ask how it is that there can be three Englishmen wanted by the Lions and yet not one working with England. The point, of course, is that Gatland didn’t want the England coaches.
This should be of genuine concern to Jones and England. Their stated ambition is to be the best in the world in France in 2023; part of that plan requires them to assemble a world-beating coaching team. The evidence would suggest that, in this, they are coming up short.
To a certain small and tight-lipped body in and around the RFU, this may be already becoming apparent. After England had finished fifth in the recent Six Nations Championship, Bill Sweeney, the RFU chief executive, announced a review. The review would be more than the traditional end-of-campaign appraisal, it would comprise of people from outside the RFU as well as in. And it would be fast-forwarded in order to complete its job in the middle of April — which is pretty much where we are now.
If this review panel is honest, thorough, hard and diligent, then they will be asking the very questions that Gatland has been pondering: are these coaches good enough?
One point here: it was a considerable surprise that John Mitchell, the England defence coach, was not asked to join the Lions. Mitchell has a good record and reputation in the England set-up, he also goes back a long way with Gatland to when they were muckers and team-mates in Hamilton.
Advertisement
That Gatland has Farrell at the top of his wishlist was no shock because they worked together in 2013 and 2017 and, clearly, Gatland liked what he saw. Why he didn’t regard Mitchell as the next in line, though — that is unclear.
The England review panel, though, are unlikely to encounter particularly glowing references for England’s other two coaches — Simon Amor and Matt Proudfoot, who cover attack and forwards respectively.
The noise from within the camp is that Proudfoot specialises in the scrum but has limited expertise beyond that one set piece. And for a scrum specialist, England’s latest outing, against Ireland, does not work well as a reference for him.
After the World Cup, England lost both Borthwick, their forwards coach, and Neal Hatley, their scrum coach. Proudfoot was hired to do the two jobs in one; in fact he is more a Hatley replacement than a Borthwick. There is a gap here.
Amor has struggled to make his mark. He filled the shoes of Scott Wisemantel, a laid-back virtuoso whose popularity with the players grew the more they saw what he was doing for them. Coming after Wisemantel was therefore not easy; it didn’t help that Amor is a sevens specialist who had never coached a XVs team at Premiership level or above. Increasingly, his appointment looks like a left-of-field brainwave that just didn’t quite work.
Advertisement
Jones said of Amor that his influence would be key to England’s attacking vision for 2023. “We have got to start preparing for that now,” he said. “That was a factor in appointing Simon.”
The RFU review may well be asking itself whether Amor is actually going to get that far.
The good news for England is that Jason Ryles, the highly-rated Aussie coach who missed the Six Nations due to Covid, will soon be back in the fold and available for the summer tour.
The bad news for England is that without a single coach on the Lions tour, a huge learning opportunity is being missed. Jones knows this; he has always been clear that he would encourage his assistant coaches to tour with the Lions.
Either way, there is a clear message coming from the Lions tomorrow. With a review under way, now is an opportunity for the RFU to put its foot on the ball, to pause and decide the right way forward.
Advertisement
One thing we know for sure is that Jones is not comfortable with a review; he certainly does not take happily to instruction. Nevertheless, the review panel only has one job which is to ask: is Eddie Jones’s England set-up fit for purpose? They will be misguided if their answer is anything other than no.
