Calls for Steve Borthwick’s head ignore lack of viable alternatives
If the clamour for change is to be credible, those calling for it must be able to provide credible alternatives. If Wales sack Warren Gatland, who would take over and what difference would they make? The same goes for Steve Borthwick and England. Perhaps they could do a job swap? That could be fun.
No, the reality is that the supply of world-class coaches who are capable of being parachuted in to rescue struggling teams is in short supply at the moment. For years there always seemed to be an exotic foreign coach waiting in the wings to salvage England: Graham Henry, Wayne Smith, Nick Mallett, Jake White, Steve Hansen, Michael Cheika, Gatland… Eddie Jones.
When England finally bit the bullet and appointed Jones as their first overseas head coach, one of his tasks was to oversee a succession plan of English coaches underneath him. Borthwick, Paul Gustard and Neal Hatley looked like a promising trio of potential to step up after Jones’s four-year tenure. The problem was that by 2020 all three had left, Gustard as early as 2018 to take up a job at Harlequins, and then Borthwick and Hatley joined Leicester and Bath respectively after the 2019 World Cup, as Jones was awarded another four years.
Jones burned through assistants
Any sense of succession planning went out the window during Jones’s second term as he burned through an extraordinary number of assistants and had to increasingly look overseas to fill the vacancies.
There have been two outstanding candidates in the Premiership over the last decade in Mark McCall of Saracens and Exeter’s Rob Baxter. But neither have been serious considerations, despite both being brilliant directors of rugby in their own ways, and mostly because neither of them could be persuaded to leave their day jobs.
Main focus not on coaching development
At least Borthwick, when he was parachuted in at the start of last year following Jones’s sacking, came from the Premiership, having guided Leicester to the title in 2022, although only after Gatland had been sounded out to see if he might do the job on a temporary basis through to the 2023 World Cup.
Because while the major focus on the new professional game partnership between the Rugby Football Union and the Premiership clubs was on the players, there was little mention of coaching development. The RFU has its ‘Project Everest’ coaching succession plan, but it remains a fledgling operation. It was significant that Gatland was also sounded out.
It is critical to create a culture again in which coaches see the national side as an attractive job with a structure that is stable, where expertise is allowed to flourish and succession can come from within – one of the strengths of New Zealand in the last decade.
While the England squad needs to have competition for places, the same should apply to the coaches.
What is clear is that the coaching upheaval this summer following the tour of Japan and New Zealand has hindered England’s progress under Borthwick. It has left him with an unsatisfactory arrangement, with no head of conditioning, with Joe El-Abd, his new defence coach, in a part-time role until the end of the season and Kevin Sinfield, the skills and mentor coach, also in a part-time role and currently on a book tour. Richard Wigglesworth has become senior coach but is still relatively inexperienced at this level.
Farrell is the one who slipped through the net
Which is why the RFU is right to stick by Borthwick and allow that upheaval to settle down in time for the start of the Six Nations, which will be a truer testing ground of their progress.
If the RFU were to sack Steve Borthwick after the Japan game, who would be a credible successor? Phil Dowson and Sam Vesty at Northampton Saints are highly regarded and potential international coaches in waiting, but both lack the necessary experience at this level. The same can be said for Alex Sanderson at Sale Sharks. Johann van Graan is an impressive operator and has been quietly accumulating a multi-national coaching CV, but he is almost certainly in line to be the next Springbok head coach when Rassie Erasmus departs.
Even the overseas options have dwindled. Scott Robertson was the one outstanding candidate before he was appointed as All Blacks head coach earlier this year while Ronan O’Gara, excelling at La Rochelle, appears to have his eyes on succeeding Andy Farrell as Ireland head coach one day.
Farrell is the one big name that England let slip through the net. It was Jones’s decision to let him go as assistant coach when he took over from Stuart Lancaster in 2016 and by the time Jones wanted to rehire him as defence coach in 2018, he was already a senior member of Joe Schmidt’s coaching team at Ireland and on course to succeed the New Zealander. And Farrell is contracted through to the next World Cup with the Irish.
No, the reality is that the RFU would be struggling to find a successor to Borthwick even if it decided to sack him. And that is another problem altogether.