England captain Lewis Moody lost control of his troops in New Zealand
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Writing in The Guardian, Richard Williams believes that Martin Johnson must have known a captain apt to run dick-of-the-day competitions was unlikely to be a calming influence.
"Cancel the inquiries, all three of them. Tell Rob Andrew to go back to whatever it is he does with the rest of his time, instruct the Professional Game Board to get on with something useful and stuff Fran Cotton's questionnaires into the shredder, because it no longer matters that most of the players concerned refuse to fill them in.
"England's captain has just provided all the answers anyone could require to questions about the performance of the team in New Zealand and, by extension, the governance of the Rugby Football Union, a body surely without a rival for the always hotly contested title of the most dysfunctional in sport.
"On Wednesday the RFU's directors meet at Twickenham to consider the future of their acting chief executive, Martyn Thomas. They have been warned that if they do not remove him a special meeting of their 60‑strong council will be convened to consider a vote of no confidence - hardly a novelty where Twickers is concerned, since the board survived an earlier no‑confidence vote as recently as July, when Thomas stood down as chairman.
"The Rugby World Cup shenanigans have only made matters worse, as the words of Lewis Moody, extracted from his forthcoming autobiography and published at the weekend in the Mail on Sunday, make plain."
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