England’s embarrassing exit from Euro 2016 at the hands of outsiders Iceland completed an unwanted treble failure for the nation’s cricket, rugby union and soccer teams at international tournaments.
The rugby and cricket teams have rediscovered their form under foreign coaches.
Last year, England’s cricketers failed to beat a single major nation before a 15-run loss to perennial makeweights Bangladesh in Adelaide, Australia, sealed the latest in a long list of Cricket World Cup flops.
Photo: EPA
England’s rugby union team became the first main host nation to be knocked out in the first round of their Rugby World Cup.
England, Australia and Wales found themselves in the same “Pool of Death,” with only the top two going into the quarter-finals. Defeats by Wales (28-25) and Australia (33-13) on successive weekends at their Twickenham headquarters saw England knocked out.
PROVEN TRACK RECORDS
Photo: AP
In both sports, the response was similar. Two relatively low-profile English coaches in Peter Moores (cricket) and Stuart Lancaster (rugby) were sacked and replaced by Australians with proven international track records in Trevor Bayliss and Eddie Jones respectively.
After England’s 2-1 loss to Iceland in Nice, France, on Monday, a defeat that prompted the resignation of coach Roy Hodgson, Twitter was awash with requests for a quality Australian soccer coach.
Encouraged by Bayliss and English assistant coach Paul Farbrace to pursue a more aggressive approach, the one-day international side — still led by captain Eoin Morgan, but with just seven survivors from the World Cup — soon found themselves at home to New Zealand, who had hammered them at the global showpiece.
Photo: AFP
Responding to the bold style of their opponents, the new-look England side won a thrilling series 3-2.
“The learning experience we have had over the last 12 months, with the new group of players, has been so significant that there is almost a completely different team,” Morgan said on Tuesday. “I suppose for us, it was going with a new method and a new group of players.”
In rugby union, the transformation has been even more stark. Jones has won all nine of his matches as England coach, a sequence that includes a Six Nations Grand Slam and a 3-0 series win away to his native Australia, which concluded on Saturday.
However, for Jones, that was not good enough.
“We are inconsistent in our defense. We have had two poor games in defense and one very good game, and if we want to be the No. 1 team in the world then we need greater consistency in that,” he said.
GAP IN INTENSITY
Whether it is Bayliss encouraging his team to play with more freedom or Jones insisting upon reverting to a traditionally English forward-based power game, both coaches have brought a clarity to their sides’ style of play lacking under their predecessors and which many pundits say was missing from Hodgson’s men. Admittedly they have more far more chances to put their methods into practice, given their teams have an annual diet of major international competition that is not available to the England soccer coach, with a vast gap in intensity between qualifying and friendly matches compared with tournament play.
Nevertheless, on this point, the Australian duo, for all the debate about whether the financially mighty English Premier League, a magnet for overseas players, harms the development of the national soccer side, might have something to teach soccer.
German soccer journalist Raphael Honigstein, writing on the ESPN Web site, said national teams need “a clear, continuously implemented system of play, with a coach who picks his players accordingly.”
In the 50 years since England beat West Germany in the 1966 FIFA World Cup final at Wembley — the team’s last major tournament success — Germany have won three World Cups and as many European Championships.
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