English rugby wants its First Knight back

Clive Woodward

The big cheeses of the Rugby Football Union have been denying to all and sundry that they have approached Sir Clive Woodward to perform a uniquely powerful role at Twickenham that would give him free rein to shape the future of the game in England.

But there are approaches and approaches. There may have been no formal discussions - the RFU is not the brightest lamp in the street when it comes to managing a professional sport, but it is nowhere near daft enough to take liberties with a man under contract elsewhere.

There have been talks though, and Martyn Thomas, the RFU chairman, has been doing the talking. A couple of things can be taken as read in an increasingly bizarre round of private briefings and public rumour-mongering that began in the wake of England's third and final Six Nations defeat earlier this month.

Woodward is keen on a return to rugby, although not as manager or coach of the team he led to the World Cup in 2003. He believes Andy Robinson should remain as head coach. He wants a far-reaching organisational role that would carry a seat on the RFU's management board, which Thomas chairs.

Bill Beaumont, last year's Lions manager and one of England's representatives on the International Rugby Board, is said, like Thomas, to be lobbying on behalf of Woodward - as is Fran Cotton, arguably the most influential rugby politician in England, despite his self-imposed absence from hands-on administration.

England's Premiership clubs, who place chairman Thomas squarely in the enemy camp when it comes to the fierce politics of the game there, wonder whether he is courting Woodward as a man with the clout and will to bring the leading international players under greater, if not complete, RFU control. Woodward was, after all, a supporter of central contracts when he succeeded Jack Rowell as national coach in 1997.

Woodward holds out little hope of being offered the job he craves - the performance director's position now filled by Chris Spice, but with a vast range of extra powers.

This is not because he is under contract at Southampton FC; his position there is vulnerable, given the takeover forces at work at St Mary's. It is because he knows that any move to reappoint him would cause ructions on the management board and provoke another round of the in-fighting that all too regularly damages the credibility of a sport desperate for blue-chip sponsorship deals and zillion-pound broadcasting agreements.

Were Woodward honest with himself, he would also acknowledge his chances of securing a lasting agreement with the clubs on release of players for internationals - an issue at the heart of a decade's strife - are barely greater than those of Spice or Thomas or Francis Baron, the chief executive.

Peace will not break out until international fixtures are given a slot of their own, away from any meaningful club rugby. And that is not in the gift of Woodward, or any other Englishman. It is a cross-border issue, and the three Celtic unions are not minded to make life easier for the world champions.

If not Woodward, then who? As what? Two old titans of the Leicester club, Martin Johnson and Dean Richards, are being touted for a stint as England "manager", whatever that means. It is barely conceivable Robinson, for all his recent trials, would accept any major diminishing of his own influence on coaching or selection; he would sooner walk away from the job than subject himself to such humiliation. Given that this is a coaching crisis rather than a managerial one, the RFU should do one thing as a matter of urgency: throw wads of money at the Bath club in return for the services of Brian Ashton, the outstanding attacking strategist.

They could have appointed him for free - or at least, without shelling out a king's ransom in compensation - while he was managing the national academy, but they let him slip away.

Ashton would be suitably embarrassed at leaving the Recreation Ground, his spiritual home, within weeks of signing a long-term contract there, but he would not reject England in their hour or need.

Before anything can happen to anyone, however, there is the small matter of the RFU's "review process" to negotiate.

In the next few weeks there will be discussion at a monthly management board gathering; another discussion at a quarterly meeting of the union's Club England committee; the submission of a written report by Robinson; the tabling of a Six Nations report compiled by Baron; consideration of that report by Club England; an initial management board chinwag over the same document; a final decision-making meeting of the management board; and a presentation of those findings to the full RFU council.

Once all that is out of the way, Woodward may be Minister of Sport with a special brief to run the 2012 Olympics and Robinson may have emigrated to Tibet. Why not? Stranger things have happened in English rugby - and are happening now.

- INDEPENDENT