Stuart Barnes: Coach who follows Eddie Jones could get golden chance to make England great

The very concept of central contracts is an act that strengthens the national side by turning a Test team into something more akin to a club side, while at the same time addressing the financial turmoil and very real threat to the sport’s imminent future as a thriving professional game. Club and country need to come together. Now, that is radical. This is not the time for dithering. The RFU must know it has an opportunity to push through a contracting system central in everything except perhaps name. Decisive leadership is required on the part of its chief executive, Bill Sweeney.

And not only with reference to the immediate state of crisis. The World Cup is little over a year away. Minds are turning not only to the politics and economics of rugby in England but the near future, post Eddie Jones. Who will take the reins of power from the Australian?

Jones’s appointment as head coach of the national team was a rush job. England went to the mountain – Table in this instance – luring him down from his post with Stormers in Cape Town with riches and promises. The next appointment has to be less hasty, more forensic. Indeed, it is a continuing process, with the RFU aiming to announce Jones’s successor in mid-2023. At last there is something akin to planning taking place.

The big question is, who are the contenders to get the job? I’d like to think there will be a range of options: the conservative English choice, the worldly-wise one, and a left-field gamble from the southern hemisphere. Anyone who has been reading in recent years will recognise this column’s regular cast of Steve Borthwick, Ronan O’Gara and Scott Robertson.

Borthwick has much going for him. He is the one with extensive English experience, as a captain, a coach and someone immersed in the English game. He sets up a strong set piece, which is fundamental to winning Test-match rugby. And there’s his recent success, turning Leicester Tigers into Premiership winners.

Having been assistant to Jones, he broke out and plotted Tigers’ rise to the top. It is a compelling case. But … Leicester played like Eddie’s recent England teams, only more efficiently. Territory was the Tigers’ god. The game, with subtle law changes (fewer double tackles leading to more offloads, for instance) is becoming more ambitious, more attack-orientated. The former second-row is yet to prove himself the master of the offensive game. There’s also the fact that Leicester look a little forlorn without the game control of George Ford, the No 10 who has joined Sale Sharks.

Before anointing him, the RFU needs to ensure last season wasn’t a case of good players making the coaches. Borthwick is bright and dedicated. Whether he can reassemble Leicester into a winning formation is the question mark hanging over his head.

O’Gara has the global feel for the game. He left Munster prematurely as a player for coaching in France with Racing 92. In the past two seasons he has taken La Rochelle to the peak in the European club game, beating Leinster against the odds in the 2022 Champions Cup final. In 2021, his side were runners-up in both Europe and France. Between his French adventures he took a substantial cut in wages to head to New Zealand’s South Island, where he worked with great success under Robertson at Crusaders.

The Irishman is acutely intelligent, deeply driven and someone with the speed of mind to create a game plan dependent on the nature of the opposition. He was the boss as a player and encourages similar independence from his men. First and foremost, he is a coach. Any notions of Anglo-Irish animosity can be swept aside. It’s rugby first, second and third for the Munster legend.

Finally, there is Robertson, at whose feet O’Gara sat and absorbed the lessons to be taught by the southern hemisphere’s serial Super Rugby winners. Post 2019, the former All Black No.8 was bypassed for the New Zealand head coach job because of a conservative policy of promotion from within, which led to Ian Foster’s appointment and a run of losses unknown in New Zealand. When changes were made to bolster Foster’s coaching panel, Robertson was ignored; he was seen sipping coffee with Jones during the recent England tour of Australia. Eddie drinks plenty of coffee, so it’s best we don’t jump to conclusions.

If this is an age of exciting Test rugby, he has serious credentials to take over. Against that claim is the nature of Super Rugby. It unravelled a little in the last few years leading up to the pandemic. Maybe it’s a game more remote from the Test arena than the attrition of the French game.

The safe option would be Borthwick with O’Gara running the tactical side. Yet, intuitively, that feels the wrong way around. O’Gara’s feel and vision with the forward coach providing the requisite ballast is appealing, without being overtly radical.

If radical is where the RFU wants to go, on as well as off the field, the reunited Crusaders team of the breakdancing Robertson and the craft of O’Gara is a bold package. Between now and mid-2023, keep your eyes on these contenders.

– The Times

Originally published as Stuart Barnes: Coach who follows Eddie Jones could get golden chance to make England great