Eddie’s broken our men
Powell has unfinished business at Tigers
POWELL: Rejected England offer DARYL POWELL has been backed to become the next England coach – provided he brings a piece of major silverware to Castleford.
Veteran Australian Wayne Bennett, below, recently signed a new two-year contract to continue in the England hot seat.
Powell was linked with the job but, after Bennett opted to stay on, the Tigers boss turned down the chance to become part of his backroom staff.
Powell, reigning Super League coach of the year after guiding Castleford to the League Leaders’ Shield and a maiden Grand Final in 2017, is still being widely tipped to succeed Bennett. Castleford’s newly appointed director of rugby and Sky Sports pundit Jon Wells said: “Daryl has ambitions to coach England. Having spoken to him, though, he feels there is a big job still to do here at Castleford.
“This is his fifth year as head coach and the club have made great strides – but the League Leaders’ Shield is still not seen as a major piece of silverware.
“Winning the Challenge Cup or a Grand Final might make my job of retaining him a bit harder because it would tick a box he needed to go off and take the England job.”
Powell will cross swords with Leeds coach Brian McDermott at Elland Road on Friday night in a rerun of last season’s Grand Final, which the Rhinos won.
McDermott himself has publicly stated he would like to coach England one day and Wells, who played under the Leeds boss at London Broncos, added: “Daryl and Brian would be excellent candidates to succeed Wayne. They’re outstanding coaches.”
CHALLENGE CUP DRAW
REPORTS EDDIE JONES is facing a backlash from the clubs over his management of England’s top players after their miserable Six Nations.
Disquiet over the demands put upon an increasingly weary-looking squad by the authoritarian Aussie has bubbled to the surface.
While Dylan Hartley recovered after missing the France game through a calf strain, Exeter lost Jack Nowell and Harry Williams, Bath Sam Underhill and Newcastle Gary Graham to training-ground injuries.
“I don’t know the stats on how many other people are getting broken but we lost Gary to a training injury,” said Newcastle director of rugby Dean Richards.
“We were delighted Gary went, it was a great experience for him, but we were just disappointed he came back broken.
“If that’s the way that England want to go about things in terms of their preparation and what they ask of a player, so be it. We have to manage the fallout from that.
“If it is too much, you’d like to think the players will say it is too much. If there isn’t a forum to do that, then ultimately England will run out of players, won’t they?”
The concern among the clubs is that Jones’s autocratic style mitigates against opposition being voiced to his methods. The players dutifully parroted their support for training sessions played out at above Test-match intensity throughout an already punishing Six Nations when, in this extended post-Lions season, they looked to be increasingly counter-productive even for those who survived them.
Richards’ advice to Jones is to cut his losses and leave some players at home for this summer’s tour to South Africa.
“Historically people have been rested if they’ve been tired so I’d see no reason why Eddie wouldn’t do the same. The bigger picture is to win the World Cup,” he said. Of course the clubs are no angels when it comes to taking their pound of flesh and Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall was forced to defend himself yesterday against accusations of overplaying Maro Itoje.
“Maro seems to be the one who has been highlighted as being ‘out on his feet’ – that’s the quote I’ve seen,” said McCall, who started the flagging second row in week one of the season.
“But Maro’s playing record over the last 20 weeks is 10 games played, so that’s 10 weekends when he hasn’t played. Maro’s match minutes this year are really low, lower than Owen Farrell, who is playing really well. Fatigue comes from all sorts of things – how many matches you play, how you train, lots of things – and as a club we’re pretty careful with their match minutes and training loads. The players trust us regarding that.”
There is also disgruntlement among club bosses at Jones’s criticism of the lack of leaders in his squad. “There were seven Premiership captains out there on Saturday,” said Richards.
Richards was there watching Ireland trounce England and found himself looking on, not as a club director of rugby, but as a former England player.
He said of the occasion: “It was a really odd feeling – probably one of the strangest feelings I’ve known at Twickenham. It was as though people knew England weren’t going to win from the off.
“The doom and gloom in the crowd afterwards was probably concerned with how we lost.
“You can’t criticise selection because if you gave the 12 Premiership directors of rugby the same players to choose from, I don’t think you’d get the same team twice, but it’s interesting that they have almost fallen off a cliff. That’s the worry.”
IRELAND captain Rory Best and full-back Rob Kearney have signed IRFU contract extensions through until the end of next year’s World Cup.