In the cold light of elimination, Martin Johnson and the RFU may conclude that the best thing for him would be to step down
That was the end of an era, and no mistake. Eden Park on Saturday night witnessed the last stand of the generation that carried England to glory in 2003, their anguished attacks against the French in the closing minutes fanning faint sparks from the dying embers of a fire that once warmed the hearts of a rugby nation.
It was the desperate farewell, as World Cup players, of the last survivors from Sir Clive Woodward's squad. The tournament will see no more of Jonny Wilkinson, Lewis Moody, Mike Tindall, Simon Shaw and Steve Thompson. Others with birth certificates dated in the 1970s, such as Nick Easter and Tom Palmer, are also likely to leave the international scene before the next campaign begins.
Later this week we could learn that Martin Johnson, too, has taken part in his final World Cup. An admirably straightforward man who likes to make up his mind and stick to it, Johnson is unlikely to take long to reach a decision about whether to ask the Rugby Football Union to extend his contract as England manager beyond the term of his current agreement, which ends next month, or to step down immediately after failing to guide England to a place in the semi-finals in New Zealand.
Pride alone may make him contemplate seeking another four-year term in order to redeem the failure, but there were few signs during his three and a half years in charge that he is capable ? as yet ? of moulding a World Cup-winning team. Despite the introduction of several bright young talents, England are collectively no better than they were when he arrived.
Off the field, the world has seen that they are measurably worse. International rugby has known few more imposing figures than Johnson in his playing days, but that aura has clearly not transferred itself to his role as a manager.
The claim that he would trust his players to behave themselves backfired at the time when it mattered most. They do not seem to have been intimidated or otherwise persuaded by his presence into controlling the urges that led to them into the sort of scrapes that shamed their status as professionals.
Another manager would have been made to carry the can for failing to prevent them from handing the media the pretext for a series of squalid headlines. Johnson, however, was saved simply by the respect in which he is quite properly held, as well as by an underlying belief that he could not have condoned such misbehaviour, even though he found himself having to defend the culprits.
Now, in the cold light of elimination, he and his employers may very well conclude that the best thing for him would be to step down and return to club rugby for a while, adding solid experience at a lower level to whatever lessons he has learnt as an international manager. If, that is, he decides he really wants to carry on in such a role ? something about which he was far from sure during the four years between his retirement from playing and his acceptance of the RFU's unexpected invitation.
He might even have made a perfectly adequate manager this time around, had he been supported by great coaches. Morne du Plessis, another former international forward of great stature, was able to rely on Kitch Christie during South Africa's 1995 World Cup campaign, and Johnson, whose view of the game is based squarely on pragmatism and a disdain for frills, needed to hand the playing side over to a visionary of the type represented by Brian Ashton, the man he replaced, in order to create a style of play going beyond the rudimentary approach that has characterised too many of England's recent displays.
There are gifted players in this squad, but no strategic pattern aimed at creating a platform on which Ben Foden, Chris Ashton or Ben Youngs can fully express themselves. Jarringly out of tune with the modern game, Johnson's conservative approach led observers to dread England's appearances, and the occasional flash of enlightenment ? such as last year's victories against Australia ? came to seem like a temporary aberration. Against France, they looked dangerous only after impending disaster led them to abandon all thoughts of caution.
"I think what Johnno's done in his three years is to create a culture," said Mike Ford, his defence specialist, a member of the coaching team he inherited from the Ashton era. "He wants us to be a team that compete on every play, and it doesn't happen overnight. When you've got a young squad, that takes time. He was a rookie when he came in but he's developed and we're beginning to get a foundation of what he wants. He's grown in the job and you've got to keep him at the helm."
Others will disagree, particularly when England's evolution is compared with that of Warren Gatland's bright-eyed young Welshmen, although Johnson continued to insist that his team had let itself down only through the unsatisfactory execution of perfectly sound plans. "I thought we started the game pretty well," he said. "I think there were two keys to the first half. France's aerial game ? they claimed a lot of their kicks better than we did, and that led to territory. And we had some poor defence on the edge. We said during the week that France will be more clinical and lethal on the edge than anyone we've played so far. That was the case, and a couple of mistakes led to two tries, after which it was uphill. But having said that, with the ball we created two or three real chances in the first half. We made some breaks but we couldn't finish them off."
As he and his squad return home amid the noxious vapours of an ill-starred month, their disarray echoes the chaos in which the RFU finds itself, effectively leaderless and with competing interests and agendas fighting for control over the game's richest nation. A repeat of the achievement of four years ago, when Ashton's squad reached the final, might have camouflaged the cracks as far as the outside world was concerned. Failure even to reach the last four, however, will more starkly expose a vicious internal struggle.
When they appointed Johnson in the spring of 2008, those in charge must have hoped that they were laying the foundations for a stable future under a strong leader. Having dismissed two highly experienced international coaches in quick succession, they needed the new man to prove that an aura of heroism could dispel the suspicion that a total lack of coaching experience at any level might stand in the way of leading England to victory in a World Cup. That he was manifestly unable to do so puts the onus on his employers to bring the episode to a reasonably dignified conclusion.
"I believe this team's best days lie ahead of it," Johnson said as he contemplated the ruin of his plans, and there is a sense in which that must be true, at least for certain players.
But it should be a future under a different figurehead, and with a very different philosophy.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/oct/08/england-martin-johnson-future-rugby
Albert Haynesworth John Henderson Sammie Hill Lamarr Houston
No comments:
Post a Comment