Twickenham has extended the deadline for applicants interested in becoming England's head coach, giving Stuart Lancaster, who is filling the position on an interim basis for the Six Nations, two matches before deciding whether to pitch for the job.

The Rugby Football Union announced this week that the deadline would be January 31, four days before the start of the Six Nations, but when it advertised the position on its website , the closing date for applications had been put back to 15 February.

England will have by then played Scotland and Italy away. Two victories would enhance Lancaster's claims for the full-time position and Twickenham expect him to be among the applicants. The job description is such that had it been drawn up in 2008, Martin Johnson would not have been granted an interview, let alone been appointed team manager. It demands as essential "a background of demonstrable high-level achievement in a senior coaching role at either national or regional level or within a high performing, senior professional club within rugby."

Johnson, England's World Cup winning captain in 2003, had not been involved in the game since ending his playing career two years later. He resigned after England's worst World Cup campaign for 12 years, one which became mired by a series of incidents off the field.

The head coach will, says the advertisement, "develop, implement and monitor the values, disciplines and behaviours that ensure a high performing team culture based on openness, honesty, trust and confidence and demonstrate the necessary planning, organisation and leadership skills to get the very best out of management and players to create a winning England team."

Acknowledging the repair work needed after the World Cup, the advert concludes that the head coach will be expected to "win the hearts and minds of the supporters, sponsors, clubs and the game in England as a whole to support and promote the England Rugby brand."

The England wing Chris Ashton will go into the Six Nations hardly having played in the last two months. He returned from a four-game ban earlier this month and will not play in Northampton's final Heineken Cup group match against Munster in Milton Keynes having told the club he would be joining Saracens in the summer.

Ashton said he was committed to Northampton for the rest of the season, but even though the Saints need to defeat a side that has won five pool matches out of five to make the Amlin Challenge Cup quarter-finals, they have left out a player who has scored 90 tries in 106 appearances.

The Northampton director of rugby, Jim Mallinder, was said to have had words with Ashton, who has been replaced by the 19-year-old Jamie Elliott, in training this week after the Saracens move was announced, but he did not mention the wing in a statement on the team selection put out by the club, saying merely: "We are going into the match with our minds fully focused on getting the win. We have had a good run lately and want to keep the momentum going."

Ashton will not be available for Northampton again until the end of March because of his involvement in the Six Nations, raising speculation that he may have played his last game for the club he joined from Wigan in 2007.

Definitely on his way out is Mike Miller, the chief executive of the International Rugby Board for 10 years. He is stepping down at the end of the month, the first sign of the promised revolution promised by the governing body's re-elected French chairman, Bernard Lapasset.

He defeated Bill Beaumont for the position last month on a ticket to radically shake-up the IRB. "Mike will be a hard act to follow," said Lapasset, "but with my newly reaffirmed four-year mandate, a revamped IRB executive committee, a soon to be refreshed Rugby World Cup board and a vibrant council and staff, we have to tools in place to continue to drive the game forward."

The IRB is looking for a heavy-hitter to replace Miller, but its internal rules prevent anyone who is a chief executive of a member union from filling the position, ruling out the likes of New Zealand's Steve Tew, who has been a critic of the way the Board has been run.

Ireland on Friday announced Michael Kearney had replaced Paul McNaughton as the manager of the senior national team. He steps up from the Under-20s.