I despair that England let Farrell go

WITH Andy Farrell taking over from Joe Schmidt after next year’s World Cup, you can only conclude Ireland’s gain is England’s loss. First, congratulations, yet again, to Ireland for their clever and intelligent handling of their coaching succession. As for England missing out on a brilliant homegrown coach, I am almost filled with despair. Farrell has always been an outstanding individual, a great player and a coach of massive potential. Yes, he was part of the coaching team that failed to deliver at the last World Cup, but where is the joined-up thinking at Twickenham about grooming coaches? Every national coach — or assistant coach as Farrell was — will at some time be associated with failure. Eddie Jones, Graham Henry, Steve Hansen, Warren Gatland, myself and many others have been there and got the T-shirt. But that didn’t make us bad coaches. In fact, that losing experience can be the making of a coach and for the last few seasons Ireland have benefited massively from the hard yards Farrell put in with England. The feedback from Farrell with England was always positive so where was the necessity to ditch him after the World Cup? The RFU have never grasped the nettle and put a rugby man with the necessary experience in charge of rugby appointments and the result has been a succession of CEOs — with no experience of coaching national teams — making these crucial, sometimes nuanced decisions. It’s a flawed system that fails to acknowledge English coaching talent like Farrell and to keep them on board. As for Ireland, bringing in a completely new coach, perhaps from overseas, after a World Cup and announcing it well ahead of time would have been fraught. There can be an element of the ‘farewell party’ about proceedings and players’ attention could also wander to the future and the new regime and whether their face fits or not. But appointing Farrell from within is a masterstroke and kills that possibility stone dead. Farrell and Schmidt work incredibly closely. Farrell is totally respected by the players and backroom staff and when everybody clocks back on after the World Cup there will be continuity. And unless Ireland ‘bomb’ in the World Cup, there will be huge momentum. There will be plenty of time and space to pay tribute to Schmidt and the superb job he has done — he still has a Six Nations and a World Cup to go — but in many ways, despite his tremendous achievements, I feel sure he will judge himself by how Ireland perform at the World Cup. I am confident Ireland will shine but the toughest and most demanding part of his reign is only just starting.