England have ceded control of their academy system to clubs – PA/Gareth Fuller
Shortly after Sir Clive Woodward’s side had won the Grand Slam in 2003 and before going on to win the World Cup later that year, the Rugby Football Union’s director of academies, David Shaw, was predicting an even more golden future for English rugby.
Armed with £8 million of Lottery money from Sport England, Shaw had launched the World Class Performance Plan the previous year which gave birth to the Premiership’s regional academy system together with some lofty promises. Shaw set a target of producing “300 world-class players” which he believed would lead to victory at the 2007 World Cup and beyond. “England are getting more interest in this from other countries than anything we have ever done,” Shaw said. “They’re all frightened to death.”
The 300 target was patently ridiculous. Nevertheless in 21 years since those comments, England’s men’s side have won just one further Grand Slam and only five players – Owen Farrell, Maro Itoje, Tom Curry, Tom Croft and Billy Vunipola – have been nominated for World Player of the Year. Clearly, no one is shaking in fear at the power of England’s system.
Telegraph Sport spoke to multiple individuals who either had a direct role in the running of the Premiership academy or RFU pathway system or have worked alongside it, including Neil McCarthy, the head of player development at Premiership Rugby and Alan Martinovic who has been involved in state, private school and university rugby for over 40 years. Several other figures wished to remain anonymous to share their viewpoints.
Birth of academy system
In 2002, Shaw proudly told Martinovic, “In 20 years, I want England’s player-development system to be the template for the whole rugby-playing world.” Before that time Premiership clubs had sporadically operated under-19 and under-21 sides while the selection of representative sides was left to the English Rugby Football Schools Union. Everyone agrees the system was archaic and prone to favouritism, but Shaw’s academy system completely stripped the schools union of its power.
“Ireland’s system is built around their school system, that all existed before, they just built on it,” said Martinovic who has written a 10,000-word report on England’s development system. “What England and Wales did was throw the whole existing structure up in the air and say we are going to start again. Professionals are going to run this. With all these other countries – France, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland – they didn’t do that. So who was right and who was wrong?”
The RFU’s control and oversight of the academies was gradually ceded to the Premiership clubs, particularly once the initial tranche of Lottery funding ran out. This arrangement was formalised in a series of heads of agreement, now the Professional Game Partnership. Telegraph Sport understands that the RFU still provides around £7 million in funding to Premiership academies, although as McCarthy points out for every £1 the RFU invests, Premiership clubs will spend around £2 on their academies.
The issue is whether both club and country are seeking the same outcomes. McCarthy states the goal of academies is to produce players for the Premiership, which is a prerequisite to going to play for England. As he says, “B can’t come before A.” The conversion rate of academy players who go on to play in the Premiership is 34 per cent, which is double the rate of the American college system (17 per cent) and more than four times that of rugby league (6.5 per cent).
However, there are figures within the RFU who believe that clubs’ short-term instincts to maximise their academy credits can have a damaging effect on the long-term development of players. “The RFU has given the money to a club and the person at the club is employed by the club so they get sacked or kept on based on how and how well they transition kids,” a source said. “So does the academy manager really give a toss about developing and the long-term infrastructure of the game? If your DOR [director of rugby] and CEO are saying we need to get more kids through, you are not going to be too bothered by the churn and if someone gets promoted too quickly.”
Maro Itoje was the last England player to be nominated for World Player of the Year, in 2021 – Getty Images/Shaun Botterill
Another former RFU employee uses the analogy of a gardener watering his plants to compare the English development system to Ireland’s. In Ireland, they use a watering can to pour the water directly into the pots, whereas in England it is like spraying them with a hosepipe from the other side of the lawn. Some water will get in the pots, but there is massive wastage along the way.
However, the RFU is not above criticism. The pathway system which is designed to “prepare players to excel in a world-leading future England team” was very nearly detonated when Dean Ryan was appointed the head of international player development – despite having next to no background in development – and handed a mandate to cut costs. “It was like letting a fox into the hen house,” comments one former coach.
Highly rated coaches John Fletcher and Peter Walton were released and resources slashed. Many feel the RFU is only just repairing the damage, with the England Under-20 team returning to their previous level, although as we will see this can be an unreliable barometer.
Myth of a golden generation
When he was recently asked why he was the right man to lead the RFU, part of chief executive Bill Sweeney’s defence lay in what he saw as a golden generation currently coming through the pathway. “We thought we’d win a junior World Cup this year, in fact we won it a year early, and the Under-20s behind that, the Under-18s behind that, [RFU performance director] Conor [O’Shea] feels they’re strong again,” Sweeney said.
Indeed after winning the Under-20 Six Nations last year, Mark Mapletoft’s side are on course for another title this year, spearheaded by a number of rising stars including Northampton flanker Henry Pollock and Bath hooker Kepu Tuipulotu. Clearly, it is better that England win games at this level than that they do not. However, investing faith in future success on the basis of Under-20 results is a dangerous game.
Of the three England teams that won the World Under-20 Championship in 2013, 2014 and 2016, only eight players have gone on to play in a senior World Cup. “There’s absolutely no correlation between the success of an Under-20 side and the conversion rate to the senior team,” Martinovic said.
South Africa, meanwhile, have only won one Under-20 world title and reached one further final, which has not escaped McCarthy’s attention. He said: “I think South Africa have one of the worst records in the major nations of junior World Cups so it’s kind of trying to work out what ingredients around South Africa could support what we’re doing in England.”
One key difference is the lack of playing opportunities for players after the age of 18. Countries such as South Africa and New Zealand have competitions like the Currie Cup and National Provincial Championship that sit immediately below elite rugby as well as under-20 competitions. Aside from the Premiership Rugby Cup, which only consists of six pool matches, or a loan spell at a Championship or National League, there are far fewer routes to regular game-time for English players.
As my colleague Charlie Morgan wrote this week, the Premiership are hoping to introduce a rookie league. “When you look at other countries like New Zealand or Ireland, these countries have developmentally focused leagues, those immediate post-18 players, and that’s something that we’re trying to scope out at the moment,” McCarthy said.
State school projects are ‘flogging dead horse’
English rugby union has always been reliant upon private schools for its pipeline of talent. Around seven per cent of children in England attend private schools but that sector provided 13 members of Steve Borthwick’s squad that defeated France last week.
There have been no shortage of well-meaning initiatives to tackle the lack of state-school representation, the latest of which aims to get a non-contact form of rugby into 5,000 schools in the next four years. “I think trying to get programmes into state schools is flogging a dead horse,” Martinovic said. “That ship has sailed. The reason is that, let’s say, you have a school where you have a really enthusiastic guy who sets up a rugby programme but then when he leaves the whole thing collapses. Even if you get it going, it is not sustainable.”
Martinovic has seen both sides of the divide. He started off teaching at a comprehensive before winning seven Daily Mail Cups with Colston’s school in Bristol. From there, he went to head up the rugby programme at Hartpury College, who run sides in the Championship, BUCs Super League and in the ACE college league. However, the ACE colleges will rarely play the top private schools in competition.
Schools competitions tend to keep the state and private sectors apart, reducing the level of competition
“We are probably the only country in the world where the best players are not playing the best players,” Martinovic said. “I worked in an independent school for 20 years, I know how they think. Their whole raison d’etre is to show we do everything better than the state schools. If the state schools beat them then that rationale falls down. Otherwise why do parents pay their money?”
The divide is further highlighted by the fact that the finals day for the RFU National Schools Cup is held at Twickenham while the ACE final was held at Worcester’s Sixways last year and Dings Crusaders the year before that. “It is a form of apartheid,” Martinovic said. “They are saying we don’t want to play this riff raff. You can play at Dings Crusaders, thank you very much.”
Martinovic argues that academies’ purpose should be to support state schools’ provision of rugby union within their catchment area. “Kids at private schools are already getting a higher standard of coaching on a more regular basis so then why does that kid need to go to an academy session? Why? They should be focusing all the resources on the kids who wouldn’t get these opportunities in the first place. Finding the next Ellis Genge. I do feel there’s a real lack of opportunity for kids from poorer social backgrounds and ethnic minorities. I am not a woke person, but the lack of opportunity for these kids is staggering.”
Martinovic’s proposal finds a sympathetic ear within certain quarters of the RFU. “That’s where you need to invest to keep them in the game,” a former RFU pathway coach said. “The place we are currently spending money is on the kid who has done it for a while and looks OK.”
However, McCarthy pushes back against the narrative that academies are wholly reliant upon private schools. “Pre-16, it is 63 per cent–34 per cent in favour of state schools so there’s a heap of assumptions around the system that actually don’t stand the scrutiny of data,” McCarthy said. That skews slightly after 16 when players can be offered private-school scholarships but, as part of the new PGP, all Premiership clubs must have at least two partnerships with state schools. “There are challenges within it, and English rugby has its own set of unique challenges, particularly based around the fragmented education system we’ve got,” McCarthy said.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source link
The post The problem with English youth rugby, according to the coaches working there first appeared on Rugby 247.
—-
Author : rugby-247
Publish date : 2025-02-17 02:20:43
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.