Bill Sweeney, the chief executive of the Rugby Football Union (RFU), has admitted that there has been no dialogue with Andy Farrell about the prospect of taking over England after the 2027 Rugby World Cup – though stopped short of giving Steve Borthwick his full backing after a worst-ever Six Nations campaign.
Borthwick is facing a review process after overseeing England’s first one-win Six Nations, with Sweeney leading an otherwise anonymous panel that includes figures within rugby and outside of the sport to determine what went wrong during the championship.
The review is expected to be concluded in the coming weeks, and Sweeney insisted that his “primary focus is to support that coaching team and take them forward”. While the RFU will not set win targets for the start of the Nations Championship in July, improvements will need to be seen as England face South Africa, Fiji and Argentina in a demanding schedule.
It is thought that Borthwick is likely to be backed through those fixtures and probably beyond, although much will depend on the outcome of the review. The England head coach is under contract through next year’s World Cup.
Beyond that, though, there is uncertainty, with Farrell also out of contract with Ireland after the tournament. The 50-year-old said after the Six Nations that he expected contractual discussions to take place with the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) imminently, while he has also been linked with a return to Saracens.
But though insisting that some succession planning has taken place, Sweeney suggested that there a discussion with Farrell, who previously worked with England as an assistant between 2011 and 2015, is not currently taking place.
“He's under contract to the 2027 World Cup,” Sweeney said. “We're not in a dialogue, we're not in a discussion with him at the present.”
Of succession planning more generally, the RFU CEO added: “That's an ongoing process. You'd have that regardless of how we'd perform in the Six Nations.
“You've got to have that in place, not just in terms of the head coach, but we've got succession planning for every senior exec[utive] in the RFU, including myself. That would continue and does continue regardless of the outcome of one tournament.
“We want to see the most robust coaching succession planning process that we can possibly have. We've seen too many ups and downs perhaps over the years in terms of consistency.
“You're always going to have some setbacks. It's just the nature of high-performance sport. Again, we haven't got to the bottom of everything yet. Clearly, we want to be consistently performing along the lines of the French game. We want to have a consistent and reliable source of talent coming through both players and also in terms of coaching. The objective, short, medium, long term is to have a reliable process in place that gives us the best chance of consistent success.”
England have not won the men’s Six Nations since 2020, with much of the optimism that surrounded a 12-match winning run that continued into this year’s championship diminished by the four consecutive defeats that have followed subsequently.
A meeting with the Springboks at Ellis Park on 4 July represents a tricky start to the inaugural Nations Championship. Sweeney admitted it was not yet clear what squad would be at Borthwick’s disposal for the tournament as England and other nations battle a crowded calendar and the impacts of last year’s British and Irish Lions series.
“We've got to look and see who's available,” he explained. “There are quite a few players yet to come back in. So we need to see who's available, coming into those July fixtures, and then we'll have conversations with Steve and the coaching team, but also with the players involved in their clubs in terms of welfare and where they are in terms of playing or resting.
“We are really focussed on seeing progress again, seeing consistent performances and seeing better performances going forwards. That is the focus, it is not a set number of wins or a percentage. It is getting back to the way we were playing.
“You have heard Steve talk about playing big, and that has been the intention, you saw that in the final match so our focus is really getting onto that. You plan for scenarios but the real focus is focussing on the immediate problem. We still think this is an extremely strong squad and we still think it has got the potential and capability to do some really good things.”
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