Twickenham descends into farce

SITUATION VACANT: Rugby Football Union chief executive. The successful candidate must be comfortable working in a challenging environment, have a passion for rugby and be willing to bring Sir Clive Woodward back to Twickenham.

You will have to work with seven highly-paid directors employed as part of your predecessor's programme to restructure and modernise an organisation rooted in amateurism.

Interested?

The RFU is an equal opportunities employer. Which means that if you cross the management board you will have just as much chance of staying in your job as the last man. Which is none.

Still interested?

The RFU is the biggest and most commercially successful union in the world - also the biggest laughing stock, a position it has held for some time.

For more information please see the hatchet job on Brian Ashton when he was replaced as England manager by Martin Johnson.

"We have made FIFA look good," endorsed one RFU council member.

Still interested?

Twelve months ago, John Steele was. He gave up a chance to lead UK Sport into the London Olympics for the only job he considered to be more prestigious - that of leading the RFU into its home World Cup in 2015. But, after just nine months at the helm, Steele was ousted in a midnight coup by a board which had lost faith in his ability to deliver.

The same board had appointed him exactly one year earlier from an applicant list of around 100.

By all accounts, Steele detailed in his interview how he wanted to bring Woodward back to Twickenham as part of his vision to maximise the benefits of England hosting the 2015 World Cup.

But something changed. In March, Steele cancelled Woodward's interview for the performance director position and decided to re-draft the job description. From that moment on, Steele was locked in a power battle with the RFU board and its chairman, Martyn Thomas. There would only be one winner.

It is said Steele, a good man who was a success at UK Sport, found himself out of his depth at the RFU. Unable to swim in the choppy political waters.

But, if Steele made mistakes, so too did Thomas and the RFU board. They not only hired the man but endorsed every one of his decisions.

And yet Steele is gone, swept out of a job that should have been the pinnacle of his career and Thomas is now the overlord - RFU chairman, RFU interim chief executive, RFU representative on the International Rugby Board and the Six Nations committee.And so who would be interested in the chief executive position?

Would anyone be willing to make the same gamble as Steele, to give up a current position for the Twickenham hot-seat?

Simon Halliday, a council member for ten years, is one name already being floated. He applied for the job last time. A rugby man who understands the RFU's machinations.

Nigel Melville is the current chief executive of USA Rugby and was interested in the performance director job, only to realise that Woodward was the best qualified.

Some have said that Woodward should just be put in charge of the whole shooting match. That would certainly end with blood on the carpet but it would be the wrong move.

Woodward's expertise is in elite sport. After all the chaos, he will surely end up as the RFU's performance director, possibly after next year's Olympics.

All that is clear at present is that the RFU will assume host nation status of the Rugby World Cup, the third biggest sporting event on the planet, without anyone at the helm.