CHARLES SALE’S SPORTS AGENDA
ENGLAND’s seismic six Nations defeat at Murrayfield puts question marks against RFU strategy seemingly geared to continued success under head coach Eddie Jones.
Jones has been awarded a two-year extension to his contract until 2021 dependent on an ‘acceptable team performance’ at next year’s World Cup.
What is acceptable to the RFU has not been made public.
But the clause in Jones’s contract is understood to insist on reaching the semi-finals in Japan, a target which does not look quite so straightforward now, after defeats in the last two serious six Nations away games against Ireland and scotland.
The last RFU council were told the England team were ahead of win percentage targets — again not disclosed — and that will also be affected by the scotland debacle.
The ‘hearts and minds’ marketing campaign outlined to councillors is making a narrative of the team’s ‘journey’, building up to the World Cup and Jones’s focus on winning it.
This includes increasing the ‘excitement and value’ around World Cup warm-up games. Again, England defeats do not help in this regard.
The RFU papers also show that Twickenham is working with Jones, already the best-resourced head coach in world rugby, to see how sponsors and others can help a World Cup bid that urgently needs to be put back on track in Paris in just under a fortnight’s time. IT Is likely that the delay in selling the last two packages of Premier League domestic TV rights involves plenty of legal discussion. One option for the Premier League is to start the process again, offering the two 20-match sets of games along with digital clips and near live coverage.
But that move is expected to bring protests from BT sport, because they bought their one package of rights in the expectation all packages would be sold in the same process.
average BBC1 viewing figure of 2.9million (peak 3.4m) for the unappetising, uncompetitive France v Italy game on Friday night wasn’t too bad. But any match involving Italy, especially away in the Six Nations, is not worth such a showcase spot in the TV schedule. Rome may be a popular place to visit, but Italy are showing no consistent signs of improvement after 18 years in the tournament. Meanwhile, the thrilling Scotland v England game, which peaked at 8.1m, means the BBC have only the game in Paris to beat the ITV audience of 8.4m for England v Wales.