Rugby’s utopian vision is shattered by a good old-fashioned club v country row

Phil Morrow working with Saracens at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
Premiership clubs voted to block a proposal that would see Phil Morrow keep his Saracens role and work as England’s Head of Performance - Alamy Stock Photo/Action Foto Sport

If you breathed in too many of the fumes emanating from the announcement of the Professional Game Partnership, you could be forgiven for imagining that the Rugby Football Union and the Premiership clubs were skipping into the sunlit uplands of English rugby’s bright future arm in arm.

Almost a month to the day that the agreement was finalised, that utopian vision has been shattered by a good old-fashioned club v country row over the proposed appointment of Phil Morrow, the Saracens performance director, as England’s head of strength and conditioning.

On the one hand, this should be a straightforward process for a member of backroom staff, even if he were to retain his role at Saracens. After all, there are dozens of examples of Premiership coaches being seconded to the national team whether that was Harlequins’ Nick Evans as attack coach in Steve Borthwick’s first Six Nations or the entire England A coaching team earlier this year. Joe El-Abd is also arriving as defence coach for the autumn campaign while remaining Oyonnax director of rugby for the rest of the season. There was barely a peep of complaint for those job-share arrangements.

Why should it be different for Morrow? In part it is testament to the outsized influence that strength and conditioning coaches now have within teams. At Saracens, Morrow’s influence is second only to Mark McCall, the director of rugby. Some would even argue that he even surpasses McCall. Before decamping to Ireland, Aled Walters was spoken about as little short of a messiah as England’s previous head of strength and conditioning.

Proposed data ‘firewall’ fails to convince

What further heightens the importance of the role was the PGP giving Borthwick - and by extension his performance director - “final say” over sports science and medical issues. While McCall vehemently - perhaps too vehemently - defended Morrow’s integrity, it is impossible to avoid a scenario where a potential conflict of interest is created. Let’s say Saracens are playing Bath coming out of the Six Nations. In theory, it would be Morrow who would decide which England players need to be rested for that fixture. Similarly, if Fin Smith requires surgery, it would be Morrow who effectively decides when the Northampton fly half goes under the knife. Plus Morrow would know exactly what knocks every rival player is carrying. You do not have to be wearing a tin-foil hat to see how this could hand Saracens a massive competitive advantage.

The proposed ‘firewall’ which would prevent Morrow accessing players’ data while he was on Saracens’ time was dismissed out of hand by one senior figure at a rival club. “The reason they want to employ him is that he is the only person with the experience to head up that programme so are we seriously supposed to believe that the guy heading up their S&C programme will have no access to the EPS player data until the tournament? B------s.”

Another executive was more circumspect but no less opposed to the development. “It does not seem right to me that an employee who is very strategic and influential into the output of how Saracens perform can maintain a foot in both camps,” the source said. “It does not feel logical and right.”

England need Walters replacement before Girona camp

To be clear, all parties are acting in their own self interest. Morrow is by far the best candidate to replace Aled Walters. Saracens are understandably keen to keep their man. And clubs should voice their concerns that this arrangement hands a potential competitive advantage to Saracens who are still distrusted in certain quarters over the salary-cap scandal.

It would be no disaster if Morrow is unavailable for a three-day England get-together next week in London but whoever replaces Walters absolutely has to be in place before the serious training begins in Girona in three weeks.

Telegraph Sport understands that there is no regulation requiring the RFU to seek the clubs’ permission to appoint Morrow on a job-share agreement after they had gained Saracens’ blessing. However in the spirit of collaboration, this was the route they sought and now they have encountered a sizeable road block.

It is very hard to see how a compromise can be reached so what options are open to the RFU at this juncture? They could plough ahead and appoint Morrow in spite of the opposition which risks incinerating any goodwill engendered by the PGP.

Alternatively - and perhaps just as painfully for both them and Saracens - they will need to buy Morrow out of a freshly signed four-year contract. After paying a king’s ransom to poach Borthwick and most of his backroom staff from Leicester Tigers a little over two years ago, you would understand why RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney would be loath to open the chequebook once again.

Yet if Morrow is by far the outstanding candidate and they do not wish to provoke another bout of civil war with the clubs, Sweeney must grit his teeth and stump up.