Ritchie: Success makes it right time to retire

Rugby Football Union chief executive Ian Ritchie is confident that Eddie Jones has England in much better shape to avoid the mistakes of the 2015 Rugby World Cup that led to them becoming the first hosts to exit at the pool stages.

Ritchie revealed that this belief in Jones was one of the principal reasons why he has chosen this moment to announce that he will retire at the end of the summer, confident that the team and the union are in good shape.

Ritchie appointed Jones in 2015 following England’s dispiriting World Cup campaign, a failure that the 63-year-old described as “my abiding regret”. Yet the run of success under Jones, with two Six Nations titles and a record-equalling run of 18 Test wins, helped prompt Ritchie to consider his own future.

“That [the success] is one of the reasons you feel it is the right time,” said Ritchie. “We failed to deliver in 2015. It was a huge regret, horrendous. It was a huge opportunity and we chose not to take it. But I have no regrets about [appointing] Stuart Lancaster. Eddie has that knack when it comes to fine margins.

“I look back on what could and should have happened and we made the changes to deal with it. I felt very driven in 2015, despite the disappointments, that there was a responsibility to think about what you were going to do next. One felt Eddie was the right person for the job.”

The search for Ritchie’s successor begins on Monday and Jones will be consulted throughout the process even though he is not on the formal panel of appointment.

“I will be keeping close to him and talking to him in the very near future about how the process will run,” said the RFU chairman, Andy Cosslett. “Eddie has complete focus on the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan but I will seek his counsel.”