The RFU needs to finally put the troubles of 2011 behind it and prepare for next year and beyond
ANNUS HORRIBILIS
It has not been Twickenham's finest year. HQ has come to resemble the Marie Celeste with bodies disappearing at an alarming rate, yet 2011 started in heady optimism.
John Steele, the Rugby Football Union's chief executive, was about to announce his management shakeup, which would put rugby at the forefront after years of commercial-led rule; Martyn Thomas, the chairman of the board of directors, was supportive of a man he had helped appoint and England looked to be in their best shape under the team manager, Martin Johnson, after a rousing victory over Australia.
Ten months on, Steele is an ex-employee, the all-powerful Thomas will cut all his ties with the RFU in six weeks and Johnson is in limbo, yet to say whether he wants to renew a contract that ends on 31 December and unsure about who will be making the decision about his future. The poverty of the administration at the richest union in the world has defied credulity, lurching from one crisis to the next with chequebook in hand.
When Steele was drawing up his plans for reform, he consulted widely. He found, according to the Blackett inquiry panel that was set up to report on how and why he had been fired last summer, that the RFU thought it was a better organisation than it was. He deduced that it was beset by poor leadership, lacked direction and was riddled with ineffective management as a result of a complex decision-making system.
"There was no emphasis on people development, no collaborative leadership and low empowerment," Steele said. As Thomas, who will next month not only step down as the RFU's acting chief executive but also lose his place as one of the union's representatives on the International Rugby Board, the Six Nations Committee and European Rugby Cup Ltd and not take up his role next year as chairman of England Rugby 2015, reflects on the loss of his empire, the moral is that the machine is bigger than the man.
Thomas, who became chairman of the board in 2005 after his predecessor, Graeme Cattermole, led a failed coup against the then chief executive, Francis Baron, was more of an executive than non-executive chairman. He knew where he wanted to go and looked to drag others with him. It led to an imbalance which was not that perceptible as long as Baron was in office, but once he went in the middle of last year, it had a toppling effect.
Thomas was fired by the right motives, wanting the RFU to match its financial clout with authority and desperate to see England regain the pre-eminence of 2003, but his impetuosity proved his downfall: why waste time discussing and debating when there was an obvious course of action? It came full circle for him when he last month announced, without calling for a full meeting of the board let alone consult the professional game board, that Fran Cotton would head a review into the World Cup campaign and make recommendations about the national set-up.
In the early days of professionalism, Thomas was chairman of the Reform Group, a body set up to ensure that the community game did not suffer financially with professional clubs becoming more acquisitive. Cotton, then vice-chairman of the RFU, was its president, and such was the political manoeuvring at Twickenham that a high court judge was hired to report on the RFU's governance.
Thirteen years on, another high court judge, Jeff Blackett, drafted a report on governance and was immediately hit by Thomas's solicitors with a threat of a defamation lawsuit if he published the findings of his panel. It was at that point that Thomas crossed the line, but neither the board of directors nor the RFU council demanded that he go. Had a player or coach up before Blackett made a similar legal threat, they would have all frothed with outrage.
Cotton was instrumental in getting Clive Woodward appointed as England coach in 1997 and Woodward has been at the centre of the mess this year. It was Steele's determination to interview a shortlist of candidates for the new job of performance director, rather than just one, that led to his falling out with Thomas and senior members of the board.
Thomas was among those who could not imagine a better candidate for the post than Woodward but Steele, in a cathartic moment, recognised the issue was less who should be the performance director than governance. Should a big business be run on whims or on clear, defined and accountable lines?
The amateurs had an in-built majority on the board and got rid of Steele in a shabby night of the sharp knife, but the manner of his departure, just like his appointment when the single most important criterion seemed to be his willingness to hire Woodward, only served to highlight how dysfunctional Twickenham had become. The reaction to the Blackett report was to turn the media operation at Twickenham into a propaganda vehicle and try to impugn the integrity of the judge, something as self-defeating as it was nauseating.
It may have taken a botched World Cup campaign rather than the Blackett report to persuade board members that the administration needed an overhaul, with pressure growing from below that Twickenham complacently ignored until it was too late, but those directors who were part of the decision to sack Steele should ask themselves whether they should follow Thomas into retirement.
At least there are now two independent non-executive directors on the board, who should be able to thwart a future chairman with executive pretensions, while the appointment process for Steele's successor will not be obsessed with one question. Next month's independent report on how the RFU should be run will also be a catalyst for change.
And change there has to be. The RFU is responsible for community rugby and wealth generation, but the professional game board, in which the union is a partner, is responsible for the sport at the top end and any review of the World Cup campaign is its domain, which is why the Cotton inquiry had to be aborted.
Twickenham can finally put 2011 behind it and prepare for next year and beyond. The RFU remains highly profitable and England, never mind the World Cup, have considerable potential. They came to resemble the administration at HQ, not bound by a collective responsibility and seemingly not answerable to anyone, but the remaining cobwebs of the amateur era are, finally, set to be dusted away. The new chief executive will not be bound in Steele's chains.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/nov/03/rfu-the-breakdown
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