It Ain't Robbo's Fault
By Andy Brown
June 20 2006
"Robinson must go" crow the Premiership club supporters. "England can't cut it and stand as much chance of winning the world cup in 2007 as I do of playing for the Tykes", are the common kind of calls we hear.
On the face of it, they have a point. The bottom seems to have dropped out of the England performances, and its very difficult to see how England can come back from their worst run of form in the last twenty-odd years to retain the Webb-Ellis trophy. The change in line-up is cleary a major contributor to this, but the exit of Sir Clive Woodward to be replaced by his former Number Two Andy Robinson has been leapt upon by almost everyone as the main reason why its all gone pear shaped. After all, these players are top-rank Premiership players who have lived and breathed rugby for most of their lives, and know pretty much all there is to know about the game. They are skilled. They are effective. They've proved themeselves individually as talents in their own clubs. But Robinson can't seem to get the best out of them. He's obviously not a very good coach.
But wait a minute. My (albeit limited) experience of rugby coaching suggests that you need an awful lot of work to shape a bunch of players into a team. Whatever the skill level, you need to be able to convey to the players what you as a coach want from them. You have to be able to get your message across in a way that everyone can understand what's expected of him, and can put the moves and calls they're being asked to perform into practise. IT takes time with the players to mould them into a single, effective unit, rather than a bunch of talented individuals. Practise makes perfect.
And that's the key word for me - practise. Over the period of a season, where you have eight, nine, ten or more matches to play at international level, there are sixteen days allocated for England training. Sixteen days. In a year?!? That's bad enough, but more often than not you can't get those days to be consecutive.
So its no wonder as far as I'm concerned that England are doing badly at the moment. Sir Clive left the job in disgust, because he thought the world cup win in 2003 would have proved that changes needed to be made, and instead nothing happened. Andy Robinson took the job knowing this, and has tried to work with it - in my view a completely impossible task. He has taken criticism from every corner; the pundits, the fans, the media. He has taken it on the chin and not - until recently - chosen to bounce blame elsewhere. Dignity in the face of huge animosity.
Andy Robinson is as good a head-coach as any other. Put him in charge of any other national team, using any other administrative system, and I believe he would shine. We would be singing his praises, saying "Robinson is an Englishman in charge of <INSERT COUNTRY NAME HERE>, and look what he's done for them! Let's get him back to England to turn us around".
The administration of the professional game in England is to blame for the current shambles, not the coach.
NEXT TIME: An open letter to Mike McCafferty, Chief Executive of Premier Rugby, and Francis Baron, Chief of the RFU, pleading with them to stop all their childish bickering....