Tom English: They’d be embarrassed if they weren’t so shameless

WHEN Manu Tuilagi jumped into Auckland Harbour and thereby became the latest England player to disgrace himself in New Zealand, the RFU might have been forgiven for thinking that the centre had put the tin lid on their ignominy, the full stop to their embarrassment, the last mortifying act of a trek that could not have been more slapstick had the Keystone Cops coached the backs, the Three Stooges taken the forwards and Laurel and Hardy filled the roles of Johnson and Moody.

But, no. Mike Tindall getting polluted drunk, James Haskell, Dylan Hartley and Chris Ashton getting creepy with a female hotel worker and Tuilagi jumping in the drink (not to mention Ballgate, gumshield gate and sundry other gates) merely served as an aperitif to the main course which arrived yesterday, courtesy of The Times and a leaked report of Team England’s innermost thoughts on where it all went wrong.

In the history of sport it is hard to recall another document that inflicted so much embarrassment on so many people. The fact that it was allowed into the hands of The Times should have marked the end of Rob Andrew’s career at Twickenham, Andrew being the one who was supposed to be guiding what was meant to be a confidential process of opinion-gathering among the players.

All day we waited for word that Andrew had accepted the blame and had resigned, but no such word was forthcoming. Andrew missed his vocation in life. With a seemingly unembarrassable personality and a neck as robust as a jockey’s backside he should have been in government. Minister without portfolio would have suited him. He has, after all, much experience in a role that gives him so much power and yet so little responsibility.

The blame game that exploded across the English rugby landscape yesterday was astonishing but, upon reading the anonymous whinge-fest from the dressing room, it made sense of why Martin Johnson’s team were so awful in New Zealand. The leak was a thunderous humiliation for the RFU, not to mention a further example of a thoroughly dysfunctional organisation, but it did, at least, shine a light on the culture that existed in the England squad down under.

If the World Cup came down to a contest between the most pampered, the most arrogant, the most self-absorbed squad in the tournament, then England would not have just won the Webb Ellis trophy, they’d have romped it, they’d have utterly obliterated New Zealand in the final. The buck-passing in the paper yesterday was untrammelled and cowardly. It was an affront to what made England great under Johnson and Dallaglio and Back and Hill and the rest of them in 2003, namely, a warrior spirit in the face of adversity, a refusal to countenance excuses, a manly acceptance that they had a job to do and they were going to get it done no matter what.

The current mob have come up with a litany of excuse-making, a charter of sporting spinelessness. They set themselves up to fail. They appeared to be looking for reasons to underperform. All sorts of reasons. Some of their gripes were, no doubt, justified, but most were feeble. Under the cloak of secrecy, the England players spoke their minds and exposed themselves as spoilt brats.

For instance, one player had become so detached from reality that he thought that members of the SAS should have been in New Zealand to chaperone the squad and keep them out of trouble, just like they had at the 2003 and 2007 World Cups. “This time we had two old fellas and one guy who was rumoured to have told someone the night-out incident (with Tindall and chums) would be worth £100,000 from a newspaper,” said the player, who reckoned that the Special Forces ought to have been made available to England in New Zealand. “They (the SAS) got us into mini-buses and made sure we weren’t in any compromising situations (in France 2007),” he said.

I might be wrong, but “they” have better things to be doing with their time than operating as glorified tour guides to a squad of rugby players who were labouring under the misapprehension that they were global sporting superstars.

So, the absence of the SAS was a reason for England’s failure. But, according to the players, there were other reasons. Many, many other reasons.

One seemed to blame the advisors of Annabel Newton, the hotel worker who was the victim of a distasteful episode with Haskell, Hartley and Ashton, for going to a newspaper with her story. Others pointed at the press officers with the England team, who weren’t up to it. Some others appeared to be collaring a bloke called Gerard Murphy, a leadership consultant, who had “stripped away” Johnson’s personality. The meat and drink in this belly-ache surrounded the coaching and the climate in the England squad. Somebody else said the tactical playbooks were too big. “Many players didn’t look at (the playbooks) because it was in too much depth.” Didn’t even look at them!

Their pre-tournament training pitch had rabbit holes in it. The team bus got stuck in traffic too often. The press wanted them to fail. Brian Smith, the attack coach, “didn’t understand the game”. Mike Ford, the defence coach, was too hard to understand. “Half the time we had no idea what he was talking about.” Nobody think to ask him? Nobody come up with the radical notion of standing up in the team meeting and saying, ‘Hold on, Mike, can we go through that again?’

John Wells, the forwards coach, was “out of his depth.”. Dave Alred, the kicking coach, played too much golf. Team selection was wrong. The senior players had too much influence. Johnson was influenced by the media when picking the team. The captain wasn’t good enough. The team’s discipline was rubbish. The younger players were professional and committed but some of the older guys were too fond of the drink and the messing. Yet it was Tuilagi, the youngest of all, who jumped off a boat, who was dead late for a press engagement because he fell asleep and didn’t wake up in time, who struggled to come up with the name of one Scottish player when asked, just a few days before their pool game against them in Auckland. Eventually he remembered the Lamont brothers. What a relief for him. We’d still be in Auckland now if he was asked to name a few more.

Professional? Not much.

This excerpt is a beauty. “We had three months together in camp not drinking,” said one player, “and we didn’t have one social going out for some beers. And yet the night before we fly to New Zealand the RFU lay on a farewell party. Why are we being given the clear message it’s OK to get p****d when we’re about to fly to a World Cup.”

The clear message to get p****d? I doubt that Johnson addressed his squad and said, ‘Right lads, on you go, get yourself hammered tonight’. That was the players’ own doing. Their choice. If they got drunk are they seriously saying it was the RFU’s fault? They made them do it, did they? Honestly, we are talking about the thought processes of children here. You feel like saying, ‘So, Chris Ashton, if Dylan Hartley jumps off a cliff, would you jump, too, just because he did?’

“Then to be told there was a tab for us after the Argentina game was odd,” said our mystery player. Odd? Just because there is a tab doesn’t mean there is a moral obligation to abuse it. What about responsibility for your own actions? No? Obviously not. These guys are so cosseted that they wanted the SAS to protect them from dwarves. From the boardroom to the substitute’s bench, England are a buck-passing mess. As was said about Tindall barely able to stand: What a state to get in.