You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it win the World Cup.
The revelations just keep coming after England’s early elimination from the tournament they are hosting.
Head coach Stuart Lancaster and assistants Andy Farrell and Graham Rowntree have been taking some flak in the run-up to this evening’s Pool A dead rubber against Uruguay, but the RFU’s own pre-tournament horse play is now under the spotlight.
It seems there was a bizarre team-building exercise involving 20 of the backroom staff and a field of horses.
England face Uruguay this evening in their final group game, a week after they were eliminated by Australia at Twickenham.
The face of a broken man.
Stuart Lancaster is at England's press conference, but is he really present?#RWC2015 pic.twitter.com/HAycqlOLzy
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) October 6, 2015
Lancaster is likely to lose his job over the poor showing by the World Cup hosts, and another story highlighting the peculiar preparations to the World Cup by the RFU.
According to the Telegraph , Matt Parker, the England head of athletic performance, brought 20 backroom staff together at a farm in the countryside in the weeks before the World Cup for a unique leadership exercise.
The staff were told to select a horse and walk with it around a field and to try and negotiate various obstacles.
They were then instructed that they would be marked on how much trust they built up with the animal, and how quickly that trust was developed.
The performance of both horse and human was then analysed, before Parker brought everyone back to their base and gave an evaluation of everyone’s performance.
That was followed by a big fancy dinner and then some champagne to thank everyone for their efforts.
Lancaster, Rowntree and Farrell were not present but the revelation is just another embarrassment for the under-pressure coaching ticket.
You just can’t imagine Joe Schmidt doing something like that.
England RFU players spent a day 'horse whispering’ in a field outside Bath proving mixing donkeys and horses doesn't work #Fools&Horses
— Craig Thompson (@craigy_craig) October 10, 2015
Gets worse re England rugby.Coaches banned, reports of Nick Mallet tapped up, stories of horse whispering for staff.Oh, & it's Uruguay today
— Ian Stafford 💙 (@IanStaffs) October 10, 2015
