Ashton Set to Keep Job As England Coach

Brian Ashton's future as England head coach will be decided at a meeting of the Rugby Football Union's management board on December 19. He is virtually certain to be reappointed, along with his two senior coaches, John Wells and Mike Ford, after guiding the side to last month's World Cup final.

Ashton's fate hinges on recommendations which the RFU's director of elite rugby, Rob Andrew, will make to the management board next month. Andrew has conducted a series of interviews with coaches and club directors and received completed questionnaires from the World Cup squad. The RFU wants Andrew to fill the role of part-time England manager, taking on some media duties and overseeing selection.

He has yet to commit himself, but if he decides he cannot combine the role with his job of running all the union's elite departments, Twickenham would advertise for a full-time manager, something it would rather not have to do for fear that an outsider could have a divisive effect.

Andrew is part of the RFU's delegation this week in Woking where the International Rugby Board is hosting a conference on an integrated global season. The IRB wants to make the June and November international windows more meaningful and ensure fewer weakened squads are sent on tour. An annual world series is one of the ideas being considered which would involve the top 10 countries in the world playing each other once a year. The Six Nations and Tri-Nations tournaments would be included in the scheme, with the accumulated results determining World Cup seedings a year before the start of the tournament. There would be a final every year in Paris, Cardiff or London.

There have been calls in the southern hemisphere for the Six Nations to be moved towards the end of the season, but that idea is a non-starter. The Six Nations committee met before the start of the conference and agreed unanimously that the tournament would continue to be played in February and March each year. It was felt that moving to April or May would devalue the competition commercially by making it less valuable to broadcasters.

The committee also feels that it will not be able to accommodate Argentina, who have applied to join the Six Nations, and that a place should be found for the Pumas in the Tri-Nations instead.

The conference is being held at the headquarters of Capgemini, a business consultancy firm. Delegates from each country have been split up with small workshops being held in order to ensure that countries do not hijack the event by trying to persuade others to accept the merits of their plans, while some feel that the IRB is trying to nudge them in its direction.

The week will culminate in a meeting of the IRB council when the number of countries taking part in the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand will be announced. A non-binding decision was taken earlier this year to reduce the number of teams from 20 to 16, to minimize the number of mismatches, but in reality it had more to do with maximizing profits with the host union unable to set ticket prices as high as those in France this year.

The New Zealand Rugby Union was also keen to make the cut to 16 because it wants to stop teams going straight from a pool in which they enjoyed four walkovers into a tough quarter-final, as did the All Blacks this year. However, such was the impact made by the emerging nations in France that the IRB now accepts that it would be a hugely unpopular move to make any reduction and 20 teams will again contest the finals in 2011.

The Saracens forwards coach Adrian Kennedy will leave the club at the end of the season after being named as the new head coach of Taranaki. The New Zea lander joined Saracens following spells in South Africa, Ireland and Italy.