Sir Steve Hansen: Why England aren’t dominating Test rugby despite financial muscle

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Sir Steve Hansen believes that the English game is not aligned, which is ultimately hampering them at international level.

The Rugby Football Union (RFU) are the richest union in the world but they only have one Rugby World Cup triumph to show for that.

England also have a vast player pool but they have rarely been dominant in the Test arena, with the past few years in particular proving to be a disappointment.

Ahead of their series with the All Blacks in New Zealand the Red Rose appear to be making improvements under Steve Borthwick, but it remains to be seen if they can challenge the best in the world consistently.

Not putting the players first?

“The biggest difference between English rugby and, say, Irish rugby and New Zealand rugby is that there’s probably not the cohesiveness from the top down and the bottom up,” Hansen told The Times’ The Ruck podcast.

“In New Zealand and Ireland, they’re trying to work together as best they can. Now it doesn’t always end in happy families – there’s always a bit of debate because there’s two sides to every story – but there is a lot of work that goes on in making sure that the player is put first.”

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While Hansen, who was All Blacks head coach between 2012 and 2019, admitted there were disagreements, pretty much everything was geared towards making the national team successful.

Although there was a focus placed on making sure the teams were successful in Super Rugby, it came with the All Blacks in mind.

Compromise

Hansen did make concessions in an attempt to keep the franchises happy, but in return they made sure the players were in top condition going into the Test arena.

“There’s only ‘x’ amount of games you can play, you don’t need to be having camps every five minutes as an international team during a Super competition,” he added.

“We tried to limit those as much as we could because we knew it infuriated the Super coaches, but conversely the Super coaches had to look after the players during the competition.

“I just wonder sometimes in the English environment, there’s so much good work going on everywhere but is it cohesive? Is it all about the athlete or is it about the people that own the athlete? I’m not sure it’s all pulling in the same direction.”