Critics: Mike Catt and Lawrence Dallaglio

England coach Brian Ashton’s position is looking tenuous at best, after both Lawrence Dallaglio and Mike Catt delivered scathing criticisms of him.

Catt, who announced his international retirement on Saturday, had a two-page spread with extracts from his autobiography in the Mail on Sunday.

Catt admitted that he had been concerned about the make-up of Ashton’s squad from the start, and that he felt that Jonny Wilkinson had been placed under too much pressure.

“My pleasure at being selected was soon overtaken by concern that Brian’s squad seemed unbalanced,” wrote Catt.

“His decision to pick Andy Farrell ahead of Toby Flood puzzled me. Not because I have anything personal against Andy, but because it meant I was the only right-footed kicker in the number 10-12 area.

“Farrell, Jonny Wilkinson and Olly Barkley are all left-footed. Selection day for Marseille and our final warm-up game against France was not one I remember with pleasure.

“To go from captaining the side to dropping out of the 22 took me completely by surprise. Brian said he wanted to see again how certain people, who had played in the big win over Wales, responded under pressure.

“I was spitting feathers. This was an important opportunity for me to play with Jonny Wilkinson and get that 10-12 relationship back on track. It had worked so well between us in the past, yet the last time we had played together was the 2003 World Cup final.”

Catt also went on to criticise the tactical preparation for the opening games in the World Cup: an uneasy 28-10 win over the USA, followed by the 36-0 horror show defeat against South Africa.

Baffling

“Of greater concern to me was what I thought was our dreadful preparation. I found it baffling we did not seem to have done any analysis on our opening Pool A opponents, the United States, nor have a plan of what to do against them,” continued Catt.

“In the little time we spent with Brian he said he wanted us to play a simple game in order not to give anything away ahead of what everyone expected to be the pool decider against South Africa six days later.”

Ahead of the South Africa game, Catt’s concern grew deeper and deeper at the lack of what he thought to be the most basic preparatory tasks.

“Brian seemed to be in a state of confusion. I thought of packing my bags and going home. The squad seemed to me to be rudderless,” he confessed.

“At Brian’s press conference on the day before the South Africa game, he was pressed about who exactly would be wearing the number 10 shirt. Brian tried to avoid giving a definitive answer.

“Pushed further, he eventually said, ‘As an educated guess, Catt will play 10 and Farrell 12′.

“It was hard to believe that this was the day before England played South Africa in the biggest match played by either country in four years.

“I had assumed that on the morning after the US game we would have woken to find a sheet posted under the door containing all the moves for South Africa. There was nothing. We didn’t even have any video clips.”

Bitterness

Catt also thought he had been harshly treated at being droped for the critical two pool games against Samoa and Tonga, but did admit that once England had made the knockout stages, things became very different.

“I had stockpiled a lot of bitterness over the way I felt I had been treated and yet I suddenly found myself in the line-up for a fourth World Cup quarter-final, 12 years on from my first,” he said of the final.

“It is amazing how that one win in Paris (against France in the semi-final) wiped the slate clean. Before Australia we had been a team living in the shadow of 2003.

“Then we went and beat the Wallabies 12-10 and the rugby world seemed to fall off its axis.

“My outlook became more rosy when I sat down with Brian on the Tuesday to analyse our semi-final opponents, France.

“Where in the early pool matches there had been little or no analysis of the opposition,this time Brian had it all done. He had put a video together. He was on top of everything. He seemed like a different person.”

Lacked

Meanwhile, Lawrence Dallaglio said Brian Ashton lacked the managerial skills to boss England despite they fact they reached the 2007 World Cup final.

The 35-year-old Wasps forward also spilled the beans in his autobiography, which is being serialised in The Sunday Times.

Dallaglio, another member of the World Cup-winning team of 2003, says the coach’s lack of managerial skills left the 2007 squad ‘in limbo’.

“I hope I’m not going to lose a friendship over what I say about Brian, a good coach who I believe was in the wrong role,” he said.

“Head coach of the England team demands managerial skills that, in my honest appraisal, Brian doesn’t have.

“He could have brought someone in to make sure it got done or he could have taken it on himself. He did neither and the whole squad found itself in a kind of limbo.”

Dallaglio said the issue came to a head following the 36-0 pool defeat by South Africa, after which Ashton was forced to make changes.

“There has been a lot of talk about the meeting we had the next day and it was a brutal, no-holds-barred ‘what is happening?’ meeting,” he continued.

“Every player put up his hand and said what he was thinking. They didn’t know what was being asked of them but at last the confusion was out in the open.”

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Posted on October 28th, 2007 by Klaus Roe
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