Will England’s darts be hush-hush again?

THE FA have turned the foyer of the Hilton Hotel at St George’s Park into a games room for the England teams staying there in international weeks — when the public are barred from booking rooms.

The entertainment laid on for the England players in their free time includes table tennis, darts, golf putting, pool and computer games.

Manager Gareth Southgate’s games den idea, which started with an impromptu game of indoor cricket in the hotel reception area last year, is designed to increase the bonding between the various squads.

Darts is the most intriguing feature because the England players’ bizarre refusal to give any details of their darts competition at Euro 2016 became a running joke. The players did not understand that such trivial information helps feed the hungry media beast during a tournament and might deflect attention from more important scrutiny.

The two big enforcers in keeping the arrows results strictly in-house in France were James Milner, who has retired from international football, and Joe Hart, who is uncertain to be picked.

THE FA are now carving out digital opportunities for themselves to the extent that a content day with the FA Cup semi-finalists, where the FA film for their own requirements, including FA TV footage produced by Input Media, is now mandatory. However, a media day for the press is up to the four clubs to organise if they so wish.

RFU chief executive Steve Brown, after saying how disappointed he’d been with fifth place in the Six Nations, was so supportive of struggling head coach Eddie Jones that his own tenure at Twickenham is going to be judged on England results.

Brown doesn’t need to be so closely associated with Jones (right): the CEO could bring in another tier of command to distance himself from performances on the pitch — just as his ECB counterpart Tom Harrison has with England cricket director Andrew Strauss.

But Brown is happy to remain as Jones’s line manager and the consequences if England performances continue to slide. ‘The buck stops with me,’ he said. And Brown’s quote that ‘The first person that puts Eddie straight is Eddie’ may come back to haunt him, since it sums up Jones’s all-powerful position at Twickenham, win or lose.

STEVE BROWN’S ‘crisis, what crisis?’ approach to England’s worst Six Nations performance for 31 years also extends to not being overly concerned with the players having to make a ridiculous 17 commercial appearances after the defeat by Ireland. Brown merely says that the RFU closely monitor the demands on players.