Filed under: Rugby Union, Rugby World Cup, Internationals, England Rugby
While England's rugby players prepare to take on the world's best over the next six weeks, those in the boardroom are ripping the game's stability and hierachy to pieces.And former England captain Lawrence Dallaglio has claimed that the Rugby Football Union's current civil war is going to adversely affect England's chances of winning the upcoming World Cup in New Zealand.
The RFU has always rivalled the Football Association swhen it comes to self-destructive, internal strife but has edged itself into the lead in recent months with petty squabbles, legal wranglings and the continued fight over whether or not the Blackett Report should be published.
To recap, the Blackett Report, named after investigator Jeff Blackett, was set up earlier this year to get to the bottom of why chief executive John Steele and Martyn Thomas were forced to leave the RFU after a failed hunt for a new performance director.
Blackett was on the verge of reading out his findings when Thomas warned that he would issue a defamation suit against Blackett if the report was published.
However, other members of the RFU boardroom have now called for the report to be released anyhow.
In all reality, it is a bunch of "old farts" - as former captain Will Carling famously called them - arguing over very little; the equivalent of a bunch of petty sixth-formers fighting over who gets to run the tuck shop.
But Dallaglio believes that England's heads will be turned by the trouble at Twickenham and that is the last thing England need ahead of the World Cup.
He told BBC Sport: "To be successful you have to get things right on and off the pitch.
"There need to be some pretty honest conversations because if we sort our act out we are a serious contender.
"The longer this goes on, the more we give our opponents an advantage," Dallaglio added.
"Everyone knows if we sort our act out we are a serious contender - as we proved in 2003 [when England won the World Cup] - but if we keep repeatedly shooting ourselves in the foot, we give more power to our opponents.
"Sometimes in England we don't like spelling out the truth and saying what we feel.
"They need to put egos to one side and make sure decisions are made for the right reasons.
"If we do get our act together, England can be the world's best again. We won't do that until we get it right off the pitch."
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