The Rugby Football Union is determined not to make a knee-jerk decision on Stuart Lancaster’s future, with the chief executive, Ian Ritchie, hoping to conduct a post-World Cup review before coming to any decisions.
But a stricken Lancaster said after England’s World Cup exit he would “obviously” have to consider his position and sounded like a man who suspected his time may be up.
“It’s not just going to be my decision. It’s not one for now,” he said. “[But] as I said during the week the responsibility lies with me.”
Pressure is sure to build on the RFU to end Lancaster’s tenure after Australia’s biggest ever victory over England at Twickenham.
“I don’t think you can keep the same management after that,” said 2003 World Cup winner Matt Dawson immediately afterwards. “You can’t go out in the group stages of your own World Cup. Something needs to change.”
It is understood that despite Lancaster and his coaching team all having contracts through to 2020, there is an annual break clause with targets that would allow the Rugby Football Union to terminate them with limited compensation.
Lancaster’s wider achievements in rebuilding pride in English rugby after the 2011 debacle on and off the pitch in New Zealand and helping to progress the development teams will be part of the equation.
So will the extent to which Ritchie is yoked to the coach, having made the appointment and since placed great faith in his abilities with the senior side and more widely.
But the fact that England’s senior side have not quite been good enough when it matters most, together with an apparent paralysis of decision-making in selection, will count against Lancaster.
“One of my favourite phrases is ‘God give me patience and give it to me now’. We hate losing games. Let’s be clear – I don’t think we should be doing something that is developmental or a work in progress. I don’t agree with that at all. We have the capacity, the resources, the people,” Ritchie told the Guardian earlier this year.
“If you look at how many grand slams England have won, it’s disappointingly low. [But] this is not a quick fix – ‘Let’s change it, sack it, do it’. It’s got to be built over a period of time.”
However, public and media opinion will also be a factor, with England left in the awkward position of having a week of training and press duties to fulfil before a drab dead rubber with Uruguay in Manchester.
There was a smattering of boos when a drawn Lancaster appeared on the big screen at Twickenham following the numbing loss to Australia.
There is also the possibility that the RFU hierarchy may find a middle way in which he is redeployed elsewhere in the system.
In his pre-match pronouncements, the thoroughly decent Lancaster left no doubt as to where he believes ultimate responsibility lies.
“I understand the consequences, I understand where the accountability and responsibility lies and it is with me,” he said before this crunch clash.
Lancaster, whose guiding principles are famously informed by The Score Takes Care of Itself by the legendary San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh, must now deal with the fallout of what happens when it doesn’t.
At the turn of the year, crackling with anticipation before what he claimed was the biggest year for English rugby since William Webb Ellis picked up the ball in 1823, Ritchie declared this would be a “seminal” moment for the game. He has been proved right but in the last way he would have wanted.
