Woodward pins blame on clubs

13 April 2012

Clive Woodward yesterday unveiled England's strategic plan to win the World Cup, confessing that the entire hi-tech operation is in danger of being sabotaged from within Twickenham.

'Everything is in place,' he said before explaining, with heavy irony, why he feels 'more than a little angry'. 'We just don't have any players to work with. Otherwise it's looking pretty good.'

The morning after the Premiership left him in the lurch by cancelling instructions for the 12 team managers to attend their meeting with the RFU hierarchy, England's head coach revealed he has already waited six months for the Elite Player Squad programme to be approved by the clubs. He is still waiting - a damning indictment of the England Rugby Board's indecision.

The board, appointed to run the English professional game as a joint RFU- clubs enterprise, consists of five representatives from each

organisation, among them, on opposite sides, former England captains Fran Cotton and Leicester chief executive Peter Wheeler. The 'final' deadline of April 23 having been extended by a fortnight, it expired almost four weeks ago.

Cotton, one of the kingmakers responsible for appointing Woodward five years ago, said: 'The players are desperate for this to be put in place, but every time the subject is brought up at England Rugby Board level it is referred back to the directors of rugby at the 12 clubs. There has simply got to be an agreement on this.'

After months of prevarication, they will try, at an emergency session next week, to reach a decision on the blueprint from RFU performance director Chris Spice, based on the principle 'England comes first'. It stands or falls on the release of players for 20 days next season during non-Test weeks, but Woodward said agreement is 'a long, long way away'.

Such co-operation had been considered a cornerstone of last year's settlement of the protracted struggle for power between the Union and its top clubs. Woodward said: 'I went to an England Rugby Board meeting last November and said: "These are the training days I want for the elite players".'

'I expected a decision but I didn't get one. Instead, I was asked to meet the directors of rugby at the Premier-ship clubs and sort it out with them. To describe that meeting as a shambles and a waste of time is an understatement.

'You cannot hope to get agreement when they all have different agendas. Last September I was told England would be the best-prepared side in the world. As we stand today, we are the worst, the equivalent to the Barbarians.

'This time last year the England team was right up there. Pre-Lions, the team was on fire. The last 12 months have been very average.

'Some individual performances have gone down and team performances, at best, have stayed the same. The biggest reason for that was that we didn't have anywhere near enough quality training time together because, suddenly, every club had a massive say in how England were going to train.

'I don't blame any director of rugby but I am totally baffled as to why they were told not to come to Tuesday's meeting. I believe this is a political issue, not a playing one.

'We have outstanding people running our elite performance department and we have outstanding club coaches from whom we can learn, if we could only get them to come to the table.

'All I am asking is that someone makes a decision so I can get on with it. If they say I can't have the players, fine. If that turns out to be the case, I'm not going to jack my job in but let's stop deluding ourselves that we can win the World Cup. We cannot do it if we are stuck with the programme we have had for the last 12 months.'

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