Club game shoulders the blame

Rugby Union

Rugby Union

STEVE BALE

England's inability to develop the fluid and adventurous rugby about which talk has been cheap was yesterday blamed - as most of England's ills have been over recent years - on the standard of the club rugby which is supposed to prepare players for international matches.

In Jack Rowell's absence another selector, John Elliott, was belatedly summoned to Twickenham yesterday to face a press conference arranged by the Rugby Football Union. Elliott said the widely condemned performance in beating Western Samoa 27-9 would not deflect Rowell from his ambition to be ambitious. The manager had appeared to suggest England would have to revert to more tried, tested and more boring means.

"It's not easy to sit there hearing the England side booed," Elliott said. "We are looking for a more ambitious game than we have in the past. It is, however, difficult to put that style into practice and it's also not being helped by the fact that a lot of our players in their league clubs are not having the opportunity week-in week-out to play that type of game."

Elliott, the RFU's national player development officer and a former England reserve hooker, might have added that such is the way the season is structured most England players had not had the opportunity to play any type of rugby during the four weeks since the defeat by South Africa.

As his eight years as a selector span both the Geoff Cooke and Rowell eras, Elliott will recall Cooke condemning the quality of English club rugby as long ago as the end of the 1990 tour to Argentina. Managers both then and now identified the need for an intermediate level and, though the RFU yesterday formally announced the abolition of the Divisional Championship, this is not the end of divisional rugby.

Tony Hallett, the RFU secretary, said that as well as the visit already scheduled by Argentina, there would almost certainly be a second autumn Test against unnamed opponents - thought to be New Zealand - and there might even be a third. In addition, regular tours by leading southern- hemisphere provincial sides, arranged by the RFU rather than on the present ad-hoc basis, would begin next season.

All of which may just help Rowell and Elliott. "With the skills of the players we have, we have to be more patient," Elliott said. "When Geoff came in he was left with such a poor base he literally had to teach players to do certain things.

That includes decision-making and I don't think decision-making comes easily to Englishmen. We have to get more decision-makers, particularly at Nos 8, 9 and 10."

One decision that will soon be taken is whether the member clubs of the RFU will go along with the International Board by abandoning the word amateur. It may come as a surprise to find this still needs doing, but the special general meeting in Birmingham on 14 January will at least have the unanimous recommendation of the RFU committee to accept the fait accompli.

Hallett and the union's president, Bill Bishop, said yesterday that they did not anticipate a small clubs' uprising. "If there were a backlash from the grass roots we would be in some trouble," Bishop said. "I don't want to be the president when this great union breaks up."

n Mark Ring, the former Wales midfield player, has withdrawn from his transfer to West Hartlepool after accepting a job as a development officer with Cardiff. The Welsh champions have appointed Terry Holmes, the former scrum-half, as senior coach in succession to Alex Evans, who has gone home to be coaching director of the Australian .