Maladroit, inept, heavy-handed, cack-handed, crass, silly. Choose the appropriate word for this week’s public upbraiding of Stuart Lancaster by his boss, Ian Ritchie, the Rugby Football Union chief executive. If England coming second yet again in the Six Nations was “utterly unacceptable” to Ritchie, then the same should be said of an executive stumbling into a world of which he clearly knows little and has no right to be.
If Lancaster is on a beach somewhere, probably in the Canaries, then it’s a good thing because the last thing England and Twickenham need is the head coach giving his reply in public, because it’s likely to be what every director of rugby or head coach in professional rugby has, at some time, said to a meddling owner who oversteps the line.
Two immediately come to mind. First there was the “benefactor” who starved the club of cash then sought to win over the matchday squad with plane tickets to a rather important game at the other end of the country. Another simply dropped a bag of cash on the table believing it would improve performances that Saturday. To both the advice was the same and the language was equally forthright. And they should close the door on the way out.
The good news was that those offers and the rejection of them was never made public. Unfortunately Ritchie chose the most public of arenas to make his remarks. In Lancaster’s shoes I would have been livid.
To understand why, you have to understand the structures involved. Consider the pyramid which is the England side with Lancaster at its very point.
Above and resting on that point, but having no control of the pyramid, is the executive – Ritchie and co. Ritchie can advise and counsel Lancaster but he can’t tell the head coach how to run the England team.
That is Lancaster’s job and if Ritchie and the executive become sufficiently unhappy about the way he is doing it … well the point of the pyramid snaps and the head coach goes, but that is unlikely to happen when he’s just been pipped to the title by a very good side.
And that’s the problem with setting targets as Ritchie did in demanding England go to the World Cup as Six Nations champions, ranked as second in the world.
As Ritchie admitted, sport isn’t that predictable. England may have more resources, more money, more players but that doesn’t buy success at a level demanded by the chief executive. For a start, one Six Nations was never likely to elevate England to second in the world when Ireland have to settle for third spot, having won two championships on the trot and beaten both South Africa and Australia last autumn.
The reality is Ritchie not only got his sums wrong but having set those targets he should not have been surprised when others remembered them. And given he was to address a bunch of rugby journalists only three days after the Six Nations had been settled, he might have guessed what would come up and devised an answer supportive of Lancaster, because that’s his job until the day he decides England are going off the rails and a new man is needed, which he isn’t.
By any standards, given the mess Lancaster inherited after the last World Cup, he’s done a decent job and while, in rugby terms he might not have made huge steps forward since last autumn or this time last year, there are reasons to be cheerful. George Ford and Jonathan Joseph are “finds” no matter how they surfaced and England have a pack to be feared and one likely to get better when individuals such as Joe Launchbury and Ben Morgan are fit.
A side who not so long ago wondered where the next try was coming from suddenly look like the Woodward team who blitzed everyone in sight in 2000-01.
The sorry thing is that up to now Ritchie has been supportive, even extending the contracts of the coaching team until the 2019 World Cup. Some considered that unnecessary. Others saw it as a reward for getting the bulk of the job done in changing the culture. Almost a nudge to carry on and conquer that 10% of the mountain left – the bit that is steepest and hardest.
So quite what this week’s utterance is intended to prove is hard to fathom, particularly when it comes from a man – unusual for Twickenham chief executives – widely praised for having a safe pair of hands. You only have to look at his lead role in revamping European rugby to see the mind of a diplomat, so one can only assume this time he got out of his depth as so many businessmen do when it comes to sport, assuming one discipline transfers easily to the other. It doesn’t.
Where a businessman and a coach might see the same objective they often diverge on how to get there. One (Ritchie?) might work backwards from the World Cup naming regular targets to be met on the way; the kind of timeline businessmen regularly have on their office wall. The other (Lancaster) knows coaching a team rarely means treading a direct line and for every step forward there can be two wobbles back.
It is not an exact science, especially when a relatively immature bunch – coaches as well as players – are learning on the hoof.
Only the World Cup will show who is correct. If Lancaster gets it badly wrong he’ll pay with his job. If England get it right, then Ritchie will, no doubt, be around publicly patting a few backs.