When the Rugby Football Union started its trawl for Stuart Lancaster’s successor as the England head coach, a repeated refrain was that money was no object. It does not appear to be the case for Eddie Jones’s management team following the breakdown in negotiations between the governing body and Bristol over Steve Borthwick.
Bristol, so the story from Twickenham goes, were demanding an exorbitant amount of money for their forwards coach, well beyond the £375,000 his 18-month contract was worth. The Championship leaders have been portrayed on social media as West Country hicks who should put country before club, but if the RFU goes on about how much money it has, it should not be surprised when a few noughts are added in compensation discussions, and especially when they are conducted halfway through a season.
Borthwick will become England’s forwards coach. The only question is whether he will be able to start immediately having submitted his letter of resignation to Bristol this week and, to put it bluntly, walked out on the club, or whether he has to sit at home as lawyers help themselves to some of the World Cup profits.
Borthwick, whether of his own accord or under advice from the RFU, reacted to the deadlock in negotiations by walking out on the club. There is little doubt that Bristol were stalling for time as they looked to first identify and then secure Borthwick’s successor and he would have acted after taking legal advice. Are Bristol due any more than the value of the remainder of Borthwick’s contract? If not, the RFU will pay up and get on with it.
The governing body is not offering much of an example to its clubs, whatever Bristol’s stance in negotiations. How would the RFU feel were the positions reversed and their forwards coach had walked out after receiving an offer from a club in between the November internationals and the Six Nations? It is unlikely that they would wave him goodbye with a good luck message.
The RFU has had to act in haste having decided to sack the entire England management team after the World Cup, well into the domestic season. It was an eventuality the governing body was not prepared for: it did well to secure Jones with little delay and Saracens have said they will not stand in the way of Paul Gustard, who has been earmarked to become England’s defence coach despite the inconvenience of having to replace him with less than six months of the season left.
Bristol are in a different position because they are in the Championship and have been since the end of the 2008-09 season. Promotion has become an all-consuming goal and even though he had only been at the club for six weeks, Borthwick had become an important figure there. While fun has been made of the club for reportedly including a loss of revenue for failing to go up at the end of the season in the talks with the RFU, something that has been denied within Ashton Gate, the consequences of missing out on the top flight again are potentially grave.
While Borthwick was able to walk out of one job and into another, others may not be so fortunate if Bristol start September in the Championship. The club’s chairman, Steve Lansdown, may feel that it would be time to withdraw his considerable investment. That would lead to drastic cuts in spending and no more well paid coaches and players. Administrative jobs would go and if Bristol had to survive on the central income for Championship clubs, promotion would become a pipe dream.
It explains why Bristol have fought so hard. It is easy to see the dispute in country and club terms with the former obliged to give way to the latter, but this is the era of contracts. The RFU had long and drawn-out discussions with Bath back in 2006 for the club’s head coach Brian Ashton, who had been in place for less than six months. Two years later, after being promoted from backs coach to head coach with England, he was looking for another job.
Borthwick should last a bit longer and it is not hard to see the hand of Jones in the events of this week. He is someone used to getting what he wants, and if he is finding that the politics of rugby in England are different to those in Australia, he will not shirk away from a contest. Not for nothing was he known as Fighting Harada by the Australian media during his time in charge of the Wallabies.
There will be other battles and with the RFU still to agree a new deal with Premiership Rugby over the management of elite players, he will make his views known, even if his ultimate wish of central contracts is not up for discussion.
He was always going to have to act quickly after taking over from Lancaster two months before the start of the Six Nations, but the RFU was precipitate this week. Borthwick has always been someone intent on doing things the right way and he has been put in a difficult position: there will come a time when he is looking for another position in rugby. Will his walking out on Bristol count against him?
No one has come out of this well. Bristol may have been intransigent in the talks with the RFU, but the union announcing the appointment of someone whose resignation had not been accepted and without giving Bristol warning does not smack of good governance. The union’s chief executive, Ian Ritchie, proved a deft negotiator during the battle over the future of the European Cup and he needs to draw again on those diplomatic skills to end what has been a sorry start to what promises to be a bold period for England.
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