07:15 AM
11/21/24
11/21/24
September 01, 2004
Sir Clive Woodward quits rugby - for football?: The head coach of the England rugby union team has resigned. Apparently he's got his eye on coaching soccer instead, possibly, one day as England head coach. This is the most improbable sports story of the year, no question.
Anything that takes Southampton closer to the relegation zone is OK by me.
posted by squealy at 02:27 PM on September 01, 2004
Well, if he does go to Southampton, even Clive will be better than (insert epithet here) Glenn Hoddle.
posted by BigCalm at 03:05 AM on September 02, 2004
More tactical awareness than Kevin Keegan as well.
posted by salmacis at 01:11 PM on September 02, 2004
I think there's a lot of media guesswork going on at the moment. No one knows why he's resigned and it makes for an interesting story. However, I do think he might slip up badly if he tried to move into football management. Not so much the coaching as he would get good people to do that for him but managers have responsibility for tactics - he can't just delegate that to another coach or tell them to punt it up the pitch (although no one seems to have told Peter Reid he can't do that this season!). I think he would have trouble earning the respect of the dressing room, the rugby world cup wouldn't mean a lot to players from countries where rugby isn't played. I think the players would feel they could ignore him as they knew more about the game than him. Where he might be good is as more of a general manager position, as they have in Europe. He deals with the off the field matters and leaves a head coach to deal with everything on the pitch. Spurs are trying this at the moment I believe.