Photograph: John Gichigi/Getty Images
Mark McCall has said Saracens would not stand in the way of Paul Gustard or Alex Sanderson, their highly regarded coaches, joining the England set-up but it would have to be only one of them.
“Obviously our preference is that they stay at the club,” said Saracens’ director of rugby. “There’s been no approaches for them at the moment. If there was one I think we would want either of them – or one of them – to explore the opportunity properly, because we want them to stay for the right reasons and not have something at the back of their minds that they could have had something different. We want to do what is best for the club but also for them. If you keep a coach here who would rather go, that would be an issue. But it hasn’t happened yet. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Eddie Jones will decide over the next few days the make-up of his England coaching panel. Technically he will inherit a panel of three – Graham Rowntree, Andy Farrell and Mike Catt – from the previous regime.
Of the young English coaches mooted as possible replacements, should Jones decide on a new direction, Gustard and Sanderson have featured prominently in speculation. Both men were given their first coaching jobs by Jones.
Sanderson, who was forced, prematurely, to retire from playing in 2005, followed Jones from Saracens to Queensland in 2006 for a turbulent year with the Reds in Super Rugby, before rejoining Jones at Saracens in 2008, where he has remained ever since.
Jones offered Gustard a position on that same coaching panel at Saracens, following the end of his playing career in 2008. Farrell and Steve Borthwick were appointed co-captains of Saracens for that one year under Jones, whose significance grows more poignant with each development. If Gustard were recruited, it would be in place of Farrell; if Sanderson were, it would be instead of Borthwick, who has reportedly been approached already.
Saracens remember all too well how events panned out when Farrell took the England job permanently in 2012, having turned it down to remain with the club.
“It was a very difficult decision for Andy three years ago,” said McCall. “He decided to stay [at Saracens]. Eventually that decision hadn’t sat well with him and he decided to go.
“That was the right thing to do because he followed his heart. In all these cases, if one of them was to decide it was the best thing for them, we would let them go.
“However, they’d think long and hard about it, because in your coaching career you don’t get too many situations like we have at the moment. You should be slow to walk away from here.”
One plausible scenario is one of Saracens’ two young coaches joins the England set-up, with Farrell going the other way to rejoin his beloved club. “Andy is a good friend of all of ours,” McCall said.
“He’s an outstanding coach and a good person as well. I hate to talk about a job he is already in. It doesn’t seem right but let’s cross that bridge when it comes to it.”
