A number of leading Premiership directors of rugby have criticised the Rugby Football Union’s reluctance to consider future national head coaches unless they have worked overseas. Senior RFU officials stressed this week that Eddie Jones’s eventual successor would ideally have spent time abroad, a requirement that has failed to impress the Premiership’s most successful coaches.
Wasps’ Dai Young, a proud Welshman, said he had little doubt that some homegrown Premiership coaches would make excellent international coaches given a decent opportunity. “Some of the DORs in England are more than capable of stepping up and do a fantastic job,” said Young, arguing that Exeter’s Rob Baxter, Northampton’s Jim Mallinder and Leicester’s Richard Cockerill had the requisite qualities.
“I don’t believe there is any need to look elsewhere. We have the expertise in England now and there are a number of people who could put their hand up for that job when it comes around. I would have absolute confidence they could step up to international rugby. You can’t be anything but impressed with the quality of people and coaches in the Premiership.”
Baxter and Mallinder have coached the second-string England Saxons in the past, while Cockerill enjoyed a spell at Clermont Auvergne, but there are many more job opportunities for southern hemisphere coaches in European leagues than vice versa. Young also feels club fortunes are not necessarily a guide to coaching brilliance and stressed all Test coaches have to start somewhere. “Alex Ferguson wouldn’t have won anything with Derby’s squad and that wouldn’t have made him any less a manager,” he said. “Eddie Jones had his first international coaching job at some stage. Steve Hansen was pretty much run out of Wales after losing 11 on the trot. How do you become an international coach if you never get the opportunity?”
Baxter, who has overseen the Chiefs’ rise from the Championship to the upper reaches of the Premiership, is also unconvinced by the logic of the RFU’s stated preference. “Going overseas is fine but where is this example of an established Premiership coach failing as the England coach?
“Guys like Richard Cockerill and Jim Mallinder have been Premiership coaches with nine or 10 years of success, have played and managed in top European competitions and have managed countless international players. Not one of them has been the England coach so where’s the failure that says a guy must go away and get international experience?”
There is also the issue of the RFU trying to encourage coaches to go abroad while simultaneously insisting all their international players must stay put. “It’s a little odd that the governing body wants the best coaches in the country to leave the country,” said Baxter. “That’s not a pathway.
“There seems to be a lot of talk about what the next England coach needs to have done yet there still hasn’t been a failure by someone who’s been through the Premiership. It’s like they’re arguing about something they’ve never even tried to do. Until that failure happens, why try and find all the issues for it?”
Saracens’ Mark McCall, whose side won the European and domestic double last season, feels similarly about his English-born rivals – “I don’t think they need to go to New Zealand to be able to coach England” – while Mallinder believes the best will thrive anywhere. “Coaching a side is coaching a side,” he said. “It’s getting a group of players working all together towards one goal.
“The southern hemisphere are pretty lucky – their coaches can come here and get good experience. I don’t think it’s quite as easy to go the other way.”
Nor is success guaranteed even for the most experienced of southern hemisphere coaches. The South African Alan Solomons has parted company with Edinburgh less than a month into the new Pro12 season, with Duncan Hodge assuming the role of acting head coach.
