'What an earth are you up to, Woody?'

Wednesday September 01 2004

Would Sir Clive survive the cut-throat world of soccer?

Former England coach Sir Clive Woodward has a reputation of never putting a foot wrong, but his desire to take on the round-balled world is destined for disaster - or so argues Danny Stephens. Our man examines the (lack of) thinking behind Woodward's hairbrained scheme.

Woodward: All at sea?

"Working with the RFU is like skiing uphill." Thus spake Sir Clive Woodward once upon a time. A grievance which presumably precipitated his departure from Twickenham's corridors of power.

What he may have overlooked is that the Football Association, his probable destination, is a miserably-run organisation with too many in-house squabbles - and not all of them concern the PA's dinner plans.

The be-knighted one enjoys a privileged position not only within his (previous) chosen sport, but within England in general.

He is respected, if not liked, by senior players and coaches without exception, and all are in admiration of his achievements at the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

Moreover, Woodward has been lauded for nurturing the international careers of the likes of Jonny Wilkinson, and he enjoys a level of funding for his operation that other organisations can only fantasise about.

Even his Australian arch-adversary cannot begin to compete with the kind of pampering Woodward enjoys, as Eddie Jones himself admitted during a press conference in South Africa recently.

So what on earth does Woodward think he is doing? Does the man not know a good thing when he sees one?

After the RWC success, many soccer pundits cast envious eyes in rugby's direction.

Here were a group of mature, honest, hard-working men who had gone and faced one of the most hostile receptions sport has known.

They didn't put a word out of place, they beat all-comers, and by the end, even the most hardened hack was asking questions at press conferences more to hear the next quip than to try and wind the team or its coach up.

But Sir Clive was surrounded by, as I said, mature, honest, hard-working men in his team. He was also surrounded by people who could recognise a good joke, and was coaching a team in a sport where corruption is thankfully almost non-existent at senior level.

The people running the rugby are generally as honest and intelligent as Woodward himself, and the game has evolved significantly since the onset of professionalism as a result.

Sir Clive fitted comfortably in this scenario - but how he will fit into the footballing fraternity remains to be seen. Indeed, if he moves into soccer he will miss a great deal of rugby's perks.

Football managers and coaches are notoriously dispensable, and it would be idiocy to imagine that Woodward would survive the number of failures he did with the English rugby team. He will be judged solely on the record of his success, and should he not deliver, he will be out on his ear.

He may well be thankful that major soccer tournaments are only every other year at a national level, and at club level, the only chairman with the annual failure tolerance level of the RFU has been Peter Kenyon of Manchester United. And it's unlikely Sir Clive will landing that job, no matter what coaching licences he gains.

Gone too, will be the mature and intelligent support of his players. Football players are simply not comparable to rugby players when it comes to behaviour in private time.

You can blame media pressure and intrusion for this as well, but it will be interesting to see if Woodward would be able to run as tight a ship as he was able to with his RWC-winning team.

Woodward has a very dry sense of humour, and a very straight-forward and honest way of talking to people. He is not one to massage egos, and it is unlikely that the spoilt millionaires of today's soccer scene would be able to relate to him, let alone build up a repartee. 

And should he land a job at Soho House, gone will be the limited support he receives from the managers of the clubs from which he drew his rugby players.

Club v country is a contentious issue in both sports, but at least Woodward has the privilege of working through the issue with club coaches who are prepared to look for common ground and thrash out a suitable compromise - a distant cry from the attitudes of Messrs Wenger and Ferguson.

Even if he did succeed, he would not be able to wield anywhere near the influence he can in the current rugby world. There are simply too many voices and too much pressure on too many people for anyone to really listen to anyone else properly in soccer.

He has many qualities, but Sir Clive is not noted for his patience, and once your patience has run out in soccer, the end is imminent.

Of course, there are some plusses involved in a switch from rugby to soccer: the FA has never really been short of cash (just as well, given the number of coaches Woodward will want to employ), he has become an astute tactician regarding substitutions, which a soccer team often needs.

His droll sense of humour and honest attitude would be a refreshing change to the soccer scene which is dominated too often by self-lauding, deceit, outrage, scandal, misbehaviour, and public spats between senior figures.

Sure, Woodward is also known to have a fuse shorter than most, but to occasionally defend the indefensible is to maintain team loyalty.

If he lands a top job with the England XI, such as his ambition is said to be, he will inherit a team which genuinely has at least as much potential to win a major tournament as his class of 2003 did when they left for Australia.

But it's doubtful it will ever get that far.

Shorn of the support he enjoyed at Twickenham - and the sporting attitude prevalent in the rugby world which encourages its players to listen to authority, honour contracts, and remember that playing for your country is more important than a £20,000 goal bonus in a meaningless club match - Sir Clive faces more of an uphill ski slope than even his own phalanx of superior fitness coaches could train him to tackle.

If, as is possible, his disgruntlement has been precipitated by the retirement of his old guard of players, and the fear that the upcoming crop will not fill their boots, why doesn't he follow their lead and retire at the top of his game?

It would make more sense than allowing himself to become a scapegoat for the failure of eleven spoilt millionaires to win a game that can too easily go either way.