The 'new' professional rugby director now has responsibility for everything except the senior England team after making it through another week of turmoil at Twickenham
Now we know what Rob Andrew does: everything. Everything, that is, except anything to do with the senior England team, from whose success ? or failure ? all else flows. Certain potential candidates for Martin Johnson's job will have perked up when they heard the news.
For Andrew has finally been divested of the responsibility to which he clung so stubbornly. His seeming reluctance actually to take it when the World Cup campaign in New Zealand went awry will hardly have helped his cause.
Firm action in public last month might have established him as the team's guiding hand. But, by acting like a civil servant anxious to melt into the shadows while his minister took the rap, he forfeited his ability to wield power where it really counts.
Or so it seemed when Ian Metcalfe, the chairman of the Professional Game Board, outlined the change in Andrew's status at Twickenham on Wednesday. So remarkable are the former fly-half's survival skills, however, that seasoned observers will not be taking bets against a clever operator's re-emergence, or the further metamorphosis of his role into something that suits him better.
"This is not a demotion," Metcalfe insisted after Andrew had become item six in the list of 10 recommendations for rebuilding the superstructure of the English game. Andrew will now be answering to the title of professional rugby director, his responsibilities including liaison with the clubs and their various competitions, and overall supervision of all England's age group teams up to but very specifically excluding the senior side.
These are the duties envisaged for him last January, when he was told that the title of director of elite rugby, which he had held since leaving Newcastle Falcons in 2006, would no longer exist. Under the plans drawn up by John Steele, the newly arrived chief executive, the various functions that had formerly been grouped together and invested in Andrew would be split into three separate jobs, and he was invited to apply for just one of them, with the much less glamorous title of operations director. A few months later, when Steele was ousted following arguments with the chairman, Martyn Thomas, the title changed to professional rugby director, and responsibility for the senior squad once again became part of his remit as England prepared for the campaign in New Zealand.
When Andrew sat next to Johnson at Twickenham two weeks ago as the team manager announced his resignation, however, he described himself as "director of elite rugby" ? his old title, which he seemed to have arrogated to himself once again in the absence of anyone else having been appointed ? or indeed anyone to appoint them, given the carnage at the RFU's upper levels.
Even then, however, Andrew refused to accept that the job required him to get involved, particularly when there were fires to be fought and heat to be taken off the team and the coaches. "My job is to run the department," Andrew said. "It's a huge department and it's not just about the playing side. Martin Johnson was appointed to run the team. That's how it works. The structure of the professional game: that's my role."
It is now, and some would say it fits a grey man's gift for doing a grey job. That would be slightly unfair to Andrew. He was a much more exciting fly-half than his reputation suggests, he did a fine job of meeting the expectations of the ambitious Sir John Hall at Newcastle and he was equally effective at negotiating the deal between the RFU and the Premiership clubs that allowed England the access they needed to the core members of their squad and compensated the clubs accordingly.
But he was behind the scenes when Andy Robinson, Sir Clive Woodward's successor, was given his marching orders, and then again when Brian Ashton, Robinson's successor, followed suit in the spring of 2008.
There was much less justification for the removal of Ashton, who had taken England to the final of the Rugby World Cup the previous autumn and had just finished off a Six Nations campaign with a resounding victory over Ireland. If the deed had to be done, it was done badly.
Andrew is said not to have been a supporter of Thomas's scheme to appoint Johnson to replace Ashton, a belief he strengthened a fortnight ago when, with Johnson sitting alongside him, he was asked whether the manager could have survived. "At some point a decision would have been made," he said. Would he have backed Johnson to stay? "That's a hypothetical question," he said, not quite accurately, "and I'm not going to answer it."
One thing of which we can be sure is that Nick Mallett and others will have been interested in the news that the next head coach will be reporting directly to the chief executive of the RFU rather than to Andrew.
But of course, being the RFU, there is currently no chief executive. And there, still occupying an adjacent office at Twickenham, will be the man who so adroitly fills a vacuum.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/nov/30/rob-andrew-survival-rfu
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