Steve Borthwick loses club v country battle as Premiership sides ‘block’ key England appointment – report
England head coach Steve Borthwick and Saracens performance director Phil Morrow.
Steve Borthwick’s attempt to rebuild his England coaching staff has suffered a blow after Premiership clubs voted against a key appointment, according to a report.
The Red Rose head coach wanted to bring in Saracens’ Phil Morrow as the country’s head of performance following the departure of Aled Walters to Ireland.
Morrow only recently signed a new four-year contract at the Londoners, but their director of rugby, Mark McCall, was hopeful that a compromise could be reached to allow him to work both jobs.
That would be similar to England’s new defence coach Joe El-Abd, who is effectively part-time with the national team at the moment as he combines it with his director of rugby duties at French side Oyonnax.
Conflict of interest and the vote
However, Morrow’s arrival required an agreement from the Premiership clubs due a potential conflict of interest.
With the new Professional Game Partnership, which was confirmed last month, Morrow could have the ability to tailor individual programmes for all players and have the final say on sports science and medical matters.
It was therefore voted on at a Premiership Rugby investor board meeting and, according to the Telegraph, they went 7-3 against, blocking Borthwick’s attempt to bring in Morrow.
An idea was proposed which would see Morrow only being able to access key data of England players during international windows, but that was rejected.
“You would have to be naive in the extreme to think he and Steve are not going to have conversations outside of those periods, otherwise why are we collecting all this data? You do not bring in a guy to head up your performance programme and then not give him the information he needs,” one senior club figure told the Telegraph.
“The RFU have made this big fuss about gaining medical control and having access to all the S and C data and they genuinely think we believe they will hire someone who does not have access to none of that information? It is ridiculous.”
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Only other option
The RFU do have the option of paying Sarries compensation to buy Morrow out of his contract, but that would take quite a significant sum to do so.
“I have no issue with him going there, but if the RFU want him so badly then they need to recruit him full-time,” a source said.
“At the moment, it feels like Saracens are trying to have their cake and eat it if he goes into a high-performance environment where ultimately he has got visibility over the best of the best. That gives Saracens a competitive advantage.”
