The Rugby Football Union has been warned that urgent action must be taken to restore confidence in the England set-up as the post-World Cup mood grows increasingly ugly.
The squad’s full-back Mike Brown says he no longer trusts his fellow team-mates following recent leaks while Bath’s head coach, Mike Ford, says the RFU should clarify the futures of the incumbent head coach Stuart Lancaster and his assistants with immediate effect.
Brown has launched a scathing attack on the unknown informant who leaked the story about players taking ill-advised share tips before the World Cup from their kit man, Dave Tennison. He is now demanding a clear-the-air meeting before the Six Nations Championship, with squad morale also splintered by Sam Burgess’s decision to abandon Bath and return to rugby league.
Ford has sharply criticised Burgess, who has returned to his former club South Sydney Rabbitohs after only one year in union. “All I know is he didn’t have the stomach to see out his contract,” said Ford, admitting the saga would make him “think twice” about signing other high-profile league players.
“This was the time to roll his sleeves up and become the player I thought he could be. He chose not to.” When asked if Bath might be better off for signing the Scotland back-row David Denton as Burgess’s replacement he replied: “Yeah, I think that is fair.”
Brown is similarly disillusioned with his international colleagues, who had pledged not to break ranks publicly in the wake of their World Cup disappointment. “The trust has gone now as far as I am concerned,” Brown told the Telegraph. “It is going to be hard for me to call anyone team-mates until we meet up. I don’t think anyone was good enough in an England shirt to be piping up saying: ‘This was wrong, that was wrong.’
“If they are going to say something, I think they should put their name to it. But it will come out who it was at the end of the day … it will be interesting when it does because I will be one of the first people to speak to them.”
The RFU management board is due to hear the recommendations of its own World Cup review next Monday but Ford, who was among the England coaches jettisoned after the 2011 World Cup, reckons the union will risk increasing negativity if it does not swiftly determine the best way forward.
“The longer they leave everything, nothing positive is going to come out of the England camp,” cautioned Ford. “It happened to me in 2011. I said right at the beginning: ‘Don’t take your time over this because it’s not nice for the families of the people involved.’
“There’s going to be little things coming out and people will twist it to make it more negative than it needs to be. I don’t know what’s taking them so long.”
