Sir Clive Woodward despairs Andy Farrell not with England

“With Andy Farrell taking over from Joe Schmidt after next year’s World Cup, you can only conclude Ireland’s gain is England’s loss,” said Woodward, writing in the Daily Mail.

“First, congratulations, yet again, to Ireland for their clever and intelligent handling of their coaching succession.

“As for England missing out on a brilliant home-grown coach, I am almost filled with despair.

“Farrell has always been an outstanding individual, a great player and a coach of massive potential.

“Yes, he was part of the coaching team that failed to deliver at the last World Cup, but where is the joined-up thinking at Twickenham about grooming coaches?

“Every national coach or assistant coach, as Farrell was, will at some time be associated with failure.

“Eddie Jones, Graham Henry, Steve Hansen, Warren Gatland, myself and many others have been there and got the T-shirt. But that didn’t make us bad coaches.

“In fact, that losing experience can be the making of a coach, and for the last few seasons Ireland have benefited massively from the hard yards Farrell put in with England.

“The feedback from Farrell with England was always positive, so where was the necessity to ditch him after the World Cup?”