Misunderstood Andrew leaves with English rugby in bloom
RFU’s outgoing director of rugby rebuilt club/country bond and raised quality of emerging young talent
Rob Andrew laughs out loud. “I spent most of my playing career being told I wasn’t good enough to play for England,” he says. “So I think I became thick-skinned as a player. I am also a pretty stubborn Yorkshire farmer’s son, so I’ve seen most things, and a few words aren’t going to make any difference.”
We are talking about some of the good riddance-type flak Andrew copped a couple of months ago upon announcement of his departure from the post of the Rugby Football Union’s professional rugby director; how the “great survivor” barbs were bandied around liberally in apparent astonishment that he has lasted 10 years at the governing body.
They followed hard on the heels of the shrieking censure he received after England’s dreadful home Rugby World Cup experience, even though it had been little to do with him. Yes, he had been one of a panel of five who appointed Stuart Lancaster as head coach in 2012, but he had not been near the senior team since that point.
But it has often been thus for Andrew, ever since that seemingly endless Roundhead-versus-Cavalier battle with Stuart Barnes for the England fly-half jersey as a player.
His time at the RFU certainly coincided with much turbulence – a litany of resignations, calamities and confrontations too long to list here, and indeed five head coaches in Andy Robinson, Brian Ashton, Martin Johnson, Lancaster and Eddie Jones – but often the default position was simply to blame Andrew and then rationalise later.
There were times when that was justified, but there were undoubtedly times when it was not, and because much of the latter probably originated from a lack of understanding of Andrew’s role and remit, it is time for him at least to try to explain.
“You have your ups and downs,” he says philosophically. “It is a highprofile role, it is a high-profile union. I have never shied away from anything. There have been some huge disappointments. I have probably had some of my worst moments in sport in the last 10 years, as well as having some of my best. But I think some of it [the criticism] stemmed from the first few years of my role, when the England head coach did report to me, but that hasn’t happened since 2011.
“To be blunt, I have never really had any involvement with any England senior team. At the end of the day, like it or lump it, and this is the same in all sports, the head coach is judged on results. It’s what head coaches do. They get selected to win matches. My role has never been to run the England senior team. It has been about the relationship between the clubs and the RFU, and the system of how we develop young England players.”
Andrew was actually manager of England’s scandal-laden tour of New Zealand in 2008 while waiting for Johnson to take over from Ashton – “yeah, that was a difficult few weeks,” he admits – but it is fair to say that Andrew’s eyes were not on the senior team when appointed director of elite rugby in 2006 after seven years as Newcastle’s director of rugby.
“The driver has always been to ask: ‘Are we any good at producing good young English players?’ ” he says. “And you can only do that if you start at the bottom. I will never forget that one of the first things I did was go to watch the Under-19 World Cup in 2007 in Belfast. In those days the two categories were under-19 and under-21 [it is now just under-20s].
“We got absolutely smashed by New Zealand. It was almost dangerous. We decided then that we had to be able to compete at age-grade level.
“And it is not just physical development we have worked really hard on. I know everyone goes on about gym monkeys and all that, but that is rubbish. If you go back eight or nine years there was a risk we were going down that road. But what we have done now is combined physical development with skill development and leadership and decision-making in the younger players.
“I think we now have a system that is producing good players out of the academies and the age-grade programmes. The club/country relationship at academy level is very strong and I genuinely think – I know this is going to be a bold statement – that we have the best academy system in the world.” It was rather fitting for Andrew then that England should have won the World Rugby Under-20s Championship last weekend, their third victory in the last four years.
“It takes time to build young players,” he says. “You have got to have a system where, when the England head coach wants or needs another player, there is one ready. You can say, ‘Right, who is it?’ The likes of Mako Vunipola, Maro Itoje, Paul Hill, Jamie George, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Owen Farrell, George Ford, Joe Launchbury, they haven’t fallen off trees! George and Owen first played for England together at 10 and 12 at under-16 level at Stourbridge against Wales in 2008.”
Indeed even after the on-and-offfield ignominy of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, the under-20s, including the likes of Ford, Farrell, Launchbury and Vunipola, brought comfort, despite losing to a brilliant New Zealand team in the final that year.
“The senior [2011] World Cup was clearly a disappointment, that is an understatement,” says Andrew. “But we also had our best under-20s team. Underneath, the system was working but nobody is interested in that when the shop window is in a mess.”
Andrew’s more pressing concern back in 2006 was the club/country relationship. The deals struck in 2008 and a new one to be announced
‘I know this is a bold statement, but I genuinely think we have the best academy system in the world’
back, we had a county championship and divisional stuff, but fundamentally the English game is about the club. History will show that all the best England teams have been full of players who performed well week in, week out for their clubs. So history is repeating itself now with Saracens.”
Andrew will leave at the end of this month to be replaced by Nigel Melville – “I always thought that after the World Cup and having done 10 years it would be time to go and do something else,” he says – and confesses that it will be “strange” leaving after so long.
“I feel I have done what I set out to do here. We had never been to a world final until 2008 at age-grade level. We have got another club/country agreement that is hopefully going to see out the next eight years. We have got the first Grand Slam since 2003, and I am not taking credit for that, but the system has helped that to be achieved. Thirteen years is too long between Grand Slams, but I guarantee that it will not be another 13 years before we win another Grand Slam.”
And when you remember that England’s greatest side, the 2003 World Cup winners, won only one Grand Slam, you can see, with such a young side now, what heady days could lie ahead.