Rugby Union: England's big Jack plays beat the clock: Steve Bale talks to Jack Rowell, who is trying to create a new ball game

IT IS as well to appreciate that Jack Rowell had England thrust upon him. Not that there was anything reluctant about it: he knew as soon as Geoff Cooke gave his notice that he was the man for the job of manager. So did those who made the appointment.

But he had not anticipated the vacancy and, with a World Cup to be planned for, it came late in the day - not only for England but for Rowell himself since he can be said to be in the evening of his coaching career, the most successful the English game has known.

In a month, Rowell's England will play their first home game - against Romania at Twickenham, with Canada to follow in December - and perhaps then we, and he, will know how far they have come and, more importantly, still have to go. For now, Rowell prefers to plead ignorance.

He has often talked since Cooke's untimely resignation last March about coming in at the 11th hour, in which case midnight - the World Cup - is now merely a metaphorical half-hour away. Rowell does not pretend other than that it was, and remains, too late.

'The build-up is a minimum two years to a World Cup; two years because you've got to pick your own squad, you've got to build your own way of playing,' he said. 'I can't catch up. How can you catch up? Everyone sees the need to change, and that is not a one-season phenomenon.'

And here we come to the nub of the problem, as Rowell sees it. England may constantly be placed among the four or five sides with a genuine World Cup chance, but they would never have had a prayer - and even the old guard of players agree with this - playing in the unlovely but pragmatic manner that served them well through most of the Cooke era.

Now that Cooke has gone, and now that Rowell has removed the coaching from Dick Best and placed it in his own hands, the attempt is being made. Australia, France, New Zealand, South Africa: they are all trying to play new rugby for a new millennium.

England have only just begun. 'Playing early-ball rugby, keeping out of contact as well as going into contact, is a very long way from the way England have very successfully played in the last six years or so,' Rowell said.

Notwithstanding the six-year success, this can actually be seen as a criticism of the old coaching regime, of which Best was the last member. However careful Rowell is to praise the achievements of his predecessors, the fact he replaced first one coach (Mike Slemen) and then the other tells its own tale.

Now, then, the responsibility falls squarely on him, a burden to which he is used from his halcyon years as Bath's coach but more especially from his high-flying business career as a senior executive with one of the world's largest food corporations. The buck stops with Jack.

Rowell is a bewilderingly busy man, living in Bath, working in Market Harborough, travelling the world, and just about available to fit in an interview as he dashes into London for yet more business meetings. Amid such a life, rugby has always been his recreation, his abundant pleasure.

Some pleasure. In World Cup terms England, by Rowell's own admission, are off the pace compared with those other leading countries for whom rugby in motion as opposed to slow-motion is an article of faith. 'Being manager of England is a privilege but don't forget how it arose,' the manager / coach said.

'It came out of the blue. Everyone thought Geoff would continue at least through to, and through, the next World Cup. If one coach has taken the team one way and you see the need to change . . . well, England were changing anyway.

'Someone like myself has to say we need to aspire to play with more flexibility and concentrate on scoring tries as well as on the more basic game that England played before. To that end, the South African tour last summer was a beginning and the proof of this pudding is going to be in the eating, starting with the Romanian game.'

At best, Rowell is not sure how the pudding will taste. At worst, you sense an unease over whether he has really shaken the England players out of the mixture of inflexibility, staleness and complacency that had afflicted them towards the end of Cooke's tenure.

Whatever happens, Rowell has already achieved most that coaching has to offer. The early promise of his playing career having been thwarted by injury, he was a respected coach in his native north-east before he ever got to Bath, taking Gosforth to the cup in 1976. Bath's five league titles and eight cups - 13 of 18 available trophies - are the familiar stuff of the Rowell legend.

Under his coaching, England B, later A, won with precisely the type of dashing rugby he now wishes to see from England and Rowell was indignant when the Rugby Football Union in its wisdom then kicked him sideways from A-team coach to manager. Then Cooke found he no longer liked the heat in the kitchen . . .

At seven months' distance, Rowell does not care to speculate on England's - his England's - World Cup chances? 'I never used to think Bath were going to win week after week and, as for England, I think people see us somewhere behind Australia, France, New Zealand, don't they?

'England at the last World Cup were playing at home, won some tight games very brilliantly and reached the final. This time, we are playing away and traditionally, as I was told before we went on the South African trip, England are not good tourists. When we got to South Africa, England as a squad had difficulty coping.

'England have changed since the last World Cup but we have run out of the ability to score tries and we must do something to solve the problem. The team may have changed, and the laws certainly have, but England haven't adjusted as rapidly as others.'

Rowell is equally concerned that the great advantage of English rugby - the sheer weight of numbers playing the game - is all but meaningless when it is related to the England team itself. Where, he wonders, is the depth of Test-class players commensurate with a playing population of 375,000? (According to the Guinness Rugby Union Fact Book, France has 218,500, New Zealand 182,500, South Africa 78,000, Australia just 11,500.)

Surely this must be an advantage? 'That's bunkum,' Rowell said. 'The numbers can cloud the issue, which is quality not quantity. Some of the countries who are supposedly short of players have a quite different advantage. When rugby is your national game you do get more oomph into it; that's one thing England have to overcome and can I say we have made a lot of progress in the last eight years?

'But you tell me where the good players are - and I'm talking about the international players. If anything happened to Rob Andrew, can you tell me who is going to play No 10?' How about Mike Catt of, er, Bath? 'He is just a lad and hasn't proven anything.'

Catt, as it happens, is really a South African. 'Compare England with South Africa,' Rowell said. 'How many quality players do South Africa have? More than anyone. And when more black and coloured people are playing the game they will be even more formidable. Look at Manchester United or the old Liverpool: squads of players who are interchangeable and I have a great aspiration to do exactly that with England.'

The trouble is that with the World Cup demands - never mind Romania or Canada or the Five Nations' Championship - pressing, Rowell is short of the commodity he needs most: time. How ironic that the former Bath coach, by trying to persuade clubs to rest their players in England's interests, should have moved to the diametrically opposite side of the debate. 'I attended a meeting last year, when Geoff Cooke was in charge, about pressure on players. I felt depressed about it from a Bath point of view because I knew that the clubs would have to give, on the basis that England would have to come first.

'It's a very difficult situation for the clubs, who have results to get, sponsors to satisfy and, very important, spectators to look after. But this isn't about the World Cup; this is about each season. The pressure on leading players has to be managed, otherwise the whole season comes to rest on their shoulders. One assumes that by the time we get to the 1999 World Cup, these issues will have been resolved.'

Rowell may wish his players to be looked after but he - a truly great amateur - prefers to keep out of the debate about the professionalisation of rugby union. As for Jacques Fouroux and the professional circus he contemplates, Rowell expects neither players nor supporters to roll up in any numbers or for any length of time.

In any event, the big (6ft 6in) man will simply continue to treat rugby as his recreation. 'I've always been fortunate,' he said. 'You have to get your job and career right and it was a self-sacrifice I willingly undertook. I was immeasurably fulfilled by the Gosforth and in particular the Bath experience and I hope to be again with England. Money simply cannot buy that kind of fulfilment.'

There is a moral there somewhere.

(Photograph omitted)