posted Oct 23, 2008

There's been a few Clive Woodward comments here, some balanced, some not.

Clive is an excellent Director of rugby. I wouldn't call him a manager because he decides on the game plan and selects the team, but he's not a coach either. he was the England Director or rugby, Thats how I'd discibe him.

The lions commitee picked him as head coach and it was a mistake. What Clive put in place with england took a good 3 to 4 years before it started to bear fruit but it ended with him putting the framework in place for england to win the rugby world cup in the southern hemisphere no less.

For the Lions he had about 12 months planning and six weeks with the players to come up with a team capable of beating a very very good NZ team in their own back yard and it was an alien concept to him.

So fine, he didn't do a great job, nobody would say that he did, but most of the personal abuse aimed at him during and since the lions tour is unfounded and pretty infantile. I doubt Jake White would make a good Lions coach either but I'd never mouth off abot him the way some fans mouth off about Woodward. The man is incredibly good at what he does and he's got the silverware and the knighthood to prove it. Can the Woodward hecklers say the same?

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posted Oct 23, 2008

Captain - I think time has shown that Clive Woodward's talents are less to do with rugby and more to do with administration.
Look at the jobs he has done since leaving rugby.
Southampton FC and the Olympics. A rugby man just doesn't do that.
He set everything in place for the coaches and players to win that 2003 World Cup. But he was not the rugby brain behind it. The 2005 Lions tour showed that he had little idea when it came to the real business of putting out a quality Test team from scratch. He was worrying more about finding quirky little extras for the squad like their favourite I-Pod tunes and Alistair Campbell's bizarre media-related requests.
He got his knighthood and the plaudits for England's 2003 success, but I think there are others far more deserving - Martin Johnson, Andy Robinson and Jason Robinson to name but three!

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posted Oct 23, 2008

Yes you are right, Clive wasn't a hands on coach, but he wasn't a manager as in booking hotels and training venues either.

Before Clive Woodward, the England rugby was incredibly amateur. Clive spent some time in Australia and he saw how well Austrialian atheletes are treated and when he got the England job he fought hard to put those high standards in place and no one else at the time were even close to bring that sort of set up to rugby. he contributed a large chunk of the RWC jigsaw.

Half the reason that England have been so poor over that last four years is the dodgy Long Term Agreement that left the England coaching set up with no time with the players. it turned england into a amatuer barabian team who turn up a week before a test match and then are expected to win against a top 8 test team. Madness. Woodward resigned because of that Long Term agreement and we've seen both club and country redress that mess with the new Long term agreement which gives the england setup unparalelled access to the players. its a tripartate contract in all but name. Clive Woodward has been been proven right. If the RFU had backed him in 2004 then all that club vs Country warfare would have been avoided. Sounds to me that clive knows his stuff.

I wouldn't dream of belittling anyones contribution to that historic win in Oz, Andy robinson, the players, everyone involved deserves their efforts to be recognised. I'm not holding Clive up with one hand while pushing anyone else down with the other, but it appears that there are a few people out there who are happy to wipe out all of his achievements and make him out to be an egotistical simpleton in the wake of a poor lions tour. It's untrue, he is an excellent director, be it rugby, football or the olympics.

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posted Oct 23, 2008

SCW is the only person from the home nations to have won a RWC and furthermore he produced an England team that was the dominant force in world rugby for the best part of 3 years. The last team to even remotely compare with them from the NH was the marvellous Welsh team of the late 60s early 70s. I therefore think Mickeyphil's comments are small minded and picky - begrudging SCW's success to presumnably suit his own agenda.

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posted Oct 23, 2008

Spectacular comment Captain. Here here! And Andy Robinson was a very key part of that team - and he is a man who could have taken a role on this Lions tour.

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posted Oct 23, 2008

Im amazed at how little interest there has been in obtaining Jake White as a coach or consultant. Not just with the Lions but by anyone I think England made a mistake with Johnson and a proven coach with a sucessful track record such as White should have been chosen. Similar to how the football team picked Fabio Cappello as their manager.

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posted Oct 24, 2008

SCW is an ideas man, he constantly chucks out ideas and as Johno has said, the good ones they took on board, the **** ones they ignored!

The 2003 England squad was packed with vastly experienced players who knew enough about rugby to appreciate a good idea and the strength of character to reject a bad one, even if it came from their head coach.

The other thing he did well was to relieve the players of worrying about anything except playing by putting professional structures in place which enabled the players to concentrate on the game, and nothing else.

If this was easy to do, then Wales and Ireland – both of whom have had better players than England for at least 3 or 4 years – would have had a stronger showing at last year’s RWC.

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posted Oct 24, 2008

Good points Sports Rep, I can remember reading about Johnno saying that.

And Like you say Eddie O'Sulivan, Bernard Laporte and Eddie Jones have failed to emulate Clive Woodward. And If you look at Jake White I personally think there are quite a few similarities.

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posted Oct 27, 2008

I agree that the Welsh set up is the only one functioning at present, also it would be far too soon for MJ. SCW has some phenomenal rugby ideas, but also some stupid ones as his first years at england showed. Unfor the Lions brought out the worst in him. It must also be added that we had quite a poor crop of players in 2005. My concern with the current set up is that there's too much Wasps focus. Especially given Wasps weak form. The media's love-in with the Wycombe club also adds to a climate where many people just view Wasps through rose tinted spectacles and overlook some seriously good players and coaches elsehwere

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posted Oct 31, 2008

This combination was tried, tested and proved at Wasps!!

I think its a great decision.

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