It is not all Martin Johnson's fault. How can it be? When you work for the most dysfunctional employers in the country, you are fully entitled to a spoonful or two of sympathy. As Brian Ashton, Andy Robinson and even Sir Clive Woodward discovered before him, coaxing success out of the players is barely half the story for any England rugby coach or manager. Few stables in world sport need a more urgent blast from a pressure-hose than the fetid corridors of Twickenham.
There can be no question, even so, that the departing Johnson has done the right thing by opting to turn in his sheriff's badge. Had he stayed, or sought to cling on in some other capacity, the post-World Cup mopping-up process would have been infinitely harder. Among his most admirable qualities is the loyalty he displays to those close to him. To be ordered to sack all or most of his assistants while lingering in office himself would have hurt him more than walking away from a job he did not need financially.
As the merry-go-round continues without him, he may even come to accept he was ill-advised to take the role in the first place. Has there ever been a national supremo who has not previously coached or managed a team at any level? For the first two years of his tenure he found himself, by his own admission, on "a steep learning curve", quickly discovering uncomfortable things about himself and the squad he had inherited. "I look back and realise there were a number of things I could have handled better," he told one interviewer last year. "I assumed a number of things of the players in terms of their understanding of what it takes to play international rugby." There were, he conceded "some very black days" early on. "I'm finding it much tougher to deal with [defeat] as a manager than when I played. As a manager it lives with you 24 hours a day. It's in your head constantly. When I lay my head down on the pillow at night, I'm thinking about it all."
According to eye-witnesses on the team bus back from Eden Park, he took England's World Cup quarter-final defeat to France harder than anyone. For someone so accustomed to success, conspicuous failure was not just a draining experience but an alien one. Maybe it had finally dawned he had been kidding both himself and the English public. What the latter wanted was a far-sighted, inspirational headmaster with strategic vision and the boldness to carry it out. What they got was a head of PE who still mostly thought like a player and never actually did much hands-on coaching.
That, in the end, was where the RFU's punt fell to earth. Johnson was not really a coach and had never managed so much as a bunch of boy scouts. He mostly believed in doing the obvious, rejecting subtlety as a luxury item. Maybe that would not have mattered had Johnson surrounded himself with more people inclined to question his decisions. If there were any, they mostly kept quiet. When blended with his innate stubbornness, it encouraged a failure to grasp nettles which, to most outsiders, should have dealt with months earlier. His loyalty to certain players began to defy reality; there was never much prospect of Shontayne Hape, a good bloke and a reliable defender but three knee reconstructions short of a gallop, and Mike Tindall threatening top-level defences at a World Cup. "I'll stand here and defend Shontayne all day long," he said in August. Wales duly did exactly that.
He stuck to captains – Steve Borthwick, Lewis Moody – who, for reasons of form or fitness were struggling to justify a starting place. It was as if he felt he did not really need a captain who would run the show by sheer force of personality because the team's real conscience was sitting in the coaching box. Others, such as Graham Henry and Warren Gatland, presided over much less prescriptive regimes. Neither of the two aforementioned individuals, perhaps significantly, won a Test cap for New Zealand where they do not judge coaches by their playing career record.
Instead, from the outset, Johnson's lofty status as a World Cup-winning captain and one of England's greatest players served mostly to confuse matters. England lost 42-6 and 32-6 respectively at home to South Africa and the All Blacks in the autumn of 2008, having limped home from a desperate summer tour of New Zealand overshadowed by lurid off-field sex allegations. Danny Cipriani was rushed back from injury only to be abruptly exiled, having failed to endear himself to the management. Cipriani's attitude at the time was clearly a factor but, equally, there seemed to be a distrust of anyone with a hint of individuality about them.
There were glorious, tantalising hints of a great leap forward. The 34-10 win over France in 2009 was a stunning team performance, as was the 35-18 victory over Australia last autumn. In retrospect, though, those twin peaks came against opponents even more prone to inconsistency than England themselves. The win in Sydney 17 months ago, courtesy of a glaring missed kick by Matt Giteau, followed a truly dire defeat in Perth. Even last season's Six Nations title was put into sober perspective by a grim defeat to Ireland in Dublin on the final weekend.
With all his players back from injury, even so, Johnson and his staff had positive vibes ahead of the World Cup. Maybe they would struggle to win the whole shooting match but they had a decent draw and, as it turned out, potential knockout games against France and either Ireland or Wales prior to the final. All too soon, however, the off-field issues swirling around England had seeped into the squad's marrow. Far from being the frowning enforcer of popular legend, Johnson's decision-making came over as strangely weak and indecisive. In public he launched a staunch defence of Tindall – "Rugby player drinks beer, shocker," he said with a sneer – but behind the scenes was trying and failing to persuade the player to issue the swift apology which would have cleared the air. Every time he warned the squad to behave, someone either jumped off a ferry or insulted a sponsor's representative. His efforts to carry the can at press conferences were admirable in their own way but his squad had clearly stopped listening some time previously.
Johnson's one-size-fits-all policy also bore little fruit. To see Ben Foden, Chris Ashton and Courtney Lawes rejuvenated for Northampton last weekend was to wonder why they seemed less constrained on the field than they did with England. How many England squad members at the World Cup looked better players than a year ago? It is hard to think of one, save for Manu Tuilagi who has spent most of his time at Leicester. That, in the end, is why Johnson could not continue. There is no question England will be a better side in four years' time but, one suspects, fresh eyes could make them better still. Waiting for Johnno, ultimately, was as much a story of doomed existential angst as anything written by Samuel Beckett.
