Johnson's England are set to come under the microscope in the coming weeks
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Lacklustre England must banish their long years of misery or call time on their team manager, argues Stephen Jones in the Sunday Times.
"Show us something, lads. Anything. These past six years should have been a joy. Instead, to watch England has felt like a prison sentence, without remission. There are many reasons to be terrified that the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is only 19 months away. One of them is that England enter the 2010 RBS Six Nations as the lowly fourth favourites of a rather unexceptional six, so in world terms are hardly on the register.
"Martin Johnson and his management team have five games in the next seven weeks. Unless England improve greatly, they have five games left in all as England’s hierarchy. Taking this a stage further, in my view they have five games before England are forced to look outside their borders for a new head man. None of the hierarchy can survive a poor tournament.
"Yet again, England rugby followers have been asked to tolerate the intolerable. Every time there is a regime change with the national team, the supporters are told to be patient, it doesn’t happen overnight (in Martin Johnson’s case, it doesn’t happen in 15 months and 15 games), the team are developing, we’re showing signs, ignore the media rotters. Blah, blah blah."
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