Andrew says there is no chance he will quit despite poor tour performance

Rob Andrew found himself confronted yesterday by the toughest question of all, about his own future after presiding over the Tour of Shame.

Asked whether he would reconsider his position as head of national playing affairs in the light of scandalous events on and off the field, England’s temporary team manager made it clear he would be going nowhere — other than back to his desk at Twickenham.

‘No, I’m not going to consider my position,’ he said. ‘I’m going to carry on with my position as elite rugby director of the RFU.’

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These have been trying times for Andrew, who had been under fire for his part in the RFU’s botched sacking of Brian Ashton as head coach. A Test series which descended into a nightmare far worse than the one here during the Tour To Hell 10 years ago ended with England’s most-capped fly half in no mood to accept the blame.

‘If you’re going to go down the blame game, absolutely not,’ he said. ‘We’ve had to deal with some very difficult situations over the last 12 months. Now we have to go back home and reflect on what we’ve learned here, good and bad.’

There is precious little of the former — James Haskell, Tom Rees, Luke Narraway, Mathew Tait, Tom Palmer, Danny Care — and a disturbingly large amount of the latter. The Red Rose faithful have every right to be sick of hearing the euphemisms endlessly trotted out by senior players and coaches ‘taking the positives’ from another thumping or ‘showing tremendous strength of character’ in this case.

The mind boggles at what the losing margin would have been had the strength of character been less than tremendous. The shocking truth is that England’s stock globally has never been as low in recent years, hence the wounding two-word farewell jibe from one New Zealand critic: ‘Good riddance.’

Anyone dismissing that and the back-to-back hammerings by the All Blacks with a ‘what-do-you-expect’ shrug is missing the point.

Whenever the English management point to the absence of five front-line players in Phil Vickery, Simon Shaw, Nick Easter, Harry Ellis and Danny Cipriani, they conveniently overlook the fact that at least six of New Zealand’s had legged it to Europe on fat contracts.

Moreover, their two best forwards, Richie McCaw and Ali Williams, hobbled off within half-an-hour.

A poor match was made all the poorer by referee Jonathan Kaplan awarding 34 penalties and freekicks, 21-13 to New Zealand. And yet, for all the Kiwis’ mediocrity, there was never the faintest prospect of England becoming the first British team to win there since Phil Bennett’s Lions in 1977.

While England bemoaned Tom Varndell and the outstanding Tait missing tries, the Blacks had three more disallowed in addition to the five they scored. Dan Carter’s 22 points, identical to last week in Auckland, means the fly half has hit England with four tries, 40 goals and 120 points in six matches.

For all Tait’s class at full back, England behind the scrum looked devoid of ideas in the absence of a backs coach, a deficiency to be rectified by Brian Smith’s appointment from London Irish. Newcastle centre Jamie Noon summed it up in one
revealing sentence: ‘At times I felt like I got a little bit lost.’

One of Martin Johnson’s most urgent problems is to arrest the decline in standards. Losing appears to cause considerably less grief now than it did when their new manager led from the front.

Haskell’s old school attitude, forged in the Wasps foundry, absolves him of any criticism in that respect. ‘I come from a club which is not used to losing,’ he said.

‘Two weeks on the trot is pretty hard to stomach. I hate to use the word embarrassing but it was a bit of a shambles. The off-field stuff was fairly irrelevant. It didn’t affect me because I was solely focused on my own job.’

That was more than could be said of others, notably David Strettle whose one-night stand with ‘Angel Barbie’ cast his late withdrawal from the bench, ostensibly because of a ‘calf strain’, in a rather different light. According to the Kiwi temptress, transport from the nightclub to the hotel had been laid on by the security staff hired to protect the players.

You couldn’t make it up.

NEW ZEALAND: MacDonald; Sivivatu, Kahui (Muliaina 73-75min), Nonu, Wulf; Carter (Donald 64), Ellis (Cowan 68); Tialata (Woodcock 41), Hore (Mealamu 35-37, 50) Somerville; Thorn, Williams (Boric 16); Thomson, So’oialo, McCaw (Lauaki 27).
Tries: Kahui, Carter, Nonu, Lauaki, Cowan. Cons: Carter 4, Donald. Pens: Carter 3.

ENGLAND: Tait (Richards 73); Ojo, Tindall, Noon, Varndell; Flood (Barkley 33), Care; Payne, Mears (Paice 76), Stevens (Hobson
71); Palmer (Kay 69), Borthwick, Haskell, Narraway (Croft 57), Rees (Worsley 53).
Tries: Care, Varndell. Con: Barkley.
Yellow card: Tindall.
Referee: Jonathan Kaplan (South Africa).