Manu Tuilagi reaction: Stuart Lancaster’s daring deeds make a man of moral courage - Michael Calvin column

THE LAST WORD

(Getty Images)

Stuart Lancaster, head coach of England’s rugby team, is a man of fine words and noble sentiments. He will be judged primarily on results, but the consequences of his actions and the pertinence of his principles have a deeper, more profound, importance.

He had no option but to exclude Manu Tuilagi, a potentially pivotal player, from his World Cup squad. An 18-stone athlete convicted of assaulting two female police officers represents a tawdry betrayal, an appalling abuse of physicality and social status.

Rugby is entering a period of unprecedented scrutiny, and fissures are starting to be revealed. It requires leaders of moral courage and acute vision, who can look beyond its masonic rituals and macho stereotypes.

Sir Clive Woodward, a predecessor of Lancaster who is not averse to regular reminders of his association with England’s World Cup win in 2003, drew the logical conclusion that the episode could end Tuilagi’s international career. Yet he went further, in implicitly criticising Lancaster for turning his creation of a new culture, based on nationhood, family, humility, mutual respect and personal responsibility, into such a public crusade. It was a spectacular misjudgement of mood and timing.

Sir Clive Woodward's criticism of Lancaster is spectacularly ill-timed (David Ashdown)

Rugby is in danger of gagging on a particularly dirty pint. It has, to a degree, been allowed to evolve in isolation, where the myths of muddied oafs flourished until they became articles of faith. Footballers, quietly resentful of their visibility, would yearn for such latitude.

Rugby has been notably slow to recognise the magnitude of the concussion issue. Despite the adoption of the doctrine of marginal gains at elite levels, alcohol remains an acceptable substitute once the testosterone frenzy of a match subsides. This is a global concern, since both Australia and New Zealand have had problems in dealing with the fallout from hormone-fuelled players hitting the bottle.

The compensatory culture of drug use, especially in young players who feel pressured to bulk up to counteract the game’s increasing reliance on power, is pernicious. Though not directly associated with the England team, it will, I suspect, be one of the themes in the build-up to this autumn’s tournament.

Ian Ritchie, the RFU chief executive, admits the sport has a dilemma which requires urgent action. Of the 48 athletes and coaches currently serving UK Anti-Doping bans, 27 are from rugby, 18 from union. Craig Chalmers, the former Scotland and British Lions fly-half, believes doping is “rife”.

England coach Stuart Lancaster (Getty Images)

His son Sam, 20, is in the final month of a two-year suspension after testing positive for anabolic steroids. He admitted to taking a pill, Pro-SD, in an attempt to add size and stature, but his father feels the authorities have not used his example to inform and educate with sufficient vigour.

Lancaster, who comes from a development background, would naturally empathise with Chambers’ plight. His holistic approach in response to the indiscipline which underpinned England’s shambolic approach to the 2011 World Cup has been so emotionally intelligent it is, in traditional rugby terms, almost counter-intuitive.

He has involved players’ parents and invoked the inspiration of formative individuals such as teachers and school rugby coaches. He has used former internationals to give an indication of heritage, and attempted to humanise the support of a nation. It is no coincidence he has been hugely influenced by the All Blacks, whose notion of legacy, expressed as “planting trees you will never see”, requires personal integrity and commitment to a higher cause.

Lancaster has passed an important examination since, in the words of Wayne Smith, who has been drafted back into the All Blacks coaching team for World Cup year, “when deeds speak, words are nothing”. Discarding Tuilagi is an eloquent restatement of belief and intent. It might even save the Leicester centre from himself.

The last post on Pietersen

When even the tiresome exhibitionists of England’s so-called Barmy Army are given a platform to pontificate on the fate of Kevin Pietersen we are safely beyond the boundaries of parody.

Please forgive the indulgence, since the monotony of a thoroughly modern controversy is stultifying, but there is a pressing need to restate the obvious. The retaliatory antics of the ECB have veered from the hysterical to the hypocritical without weakening the central truth of their case, that Kevin Pietersen remains a poisonous, if increasingly spectral, presence in the England dressing-room.

Pietersen walks off after his now infamous 355 not out (Getty) (GETTY IMAGES)

He may be able to run rings around administrators whose propensity to panic under pressure is the stuff of stand-up comedy, but his mewling self-pity and spiteful self-protection render him unselectable.

He is almost 35. Though he can still dispatch pie-throwers from cricket’s most fragile county team, Leicestershire, to all parts of The Oval, his form is increasingly spasmodic. He faces marginalisation on the global T20 circuit. Pietersen is the zombie attempting to scale the Grace Gates at midnight, the unwanted ambassador for cricket’s undead. Not even the “Last Post”, played by that wretched Barmy Army trumpeter, will lift his curse.

It is going to be a long, fractious, summer.

Gannon’s fine is tasteless

At least cricket’s Chuckle Brothers, Andrew Strauss and Colin Graves, have company in the Comedy Store. The stewards at Newbury Racecourse excelled themselves on Friday by fining former champion lady jockey Cathy Gannon £290 for breaking racing rule (D)33.1, involving the use of a mobile phone.

Her crime was to illustrate her complaints on social media about the standard of food for jockeys by using her phone to photograph two dishes (below left) in the riders’ changing-rooms. One, dried and discoloured, appeared to involve chickpeas, the other featured the remnants of several notably scrawny chickens. Hardly appetising, and it was not remotely unfair to highlight the need for athletes to be properly fuelled. But, in racing’s archaic, forelock-tugging world, that apparently represents sedition. Pathetic, isn’t it?