Coach Ashton Gets Go-ahead to Carry on Into Six Nations

Brian Ashton will today be invited to take England into next year's Six Nations Championship, along with his assistants, Mike Ford and John Wells, two months after they appeared destined for the sack after a poor start to the World Cup defense.

The Rugby Football Union's management board meets today to consider a recommendation from its elite rugby director, Rob Andrew, that the trio be offered new contracts. Andrew has conducted an exhaustive review of a campaign that ultimately led to the World Cup final.

The RFU asked Andrew to consider appointing himself as manager, even on a semi-official basis, but he says that would make it more difficult to review the coaches' performances. He will recommend that no appointment is made but he will act, as he did in the latter half of the World Cup, in a supervisory capacity, sitting in at media conferences and selection meetings.

Names linked with the manager's job included England's 2003 World Cup-winning captain, Martin Johnson, and the former South Africa coach Jake White, whose Springboks defeated Ashton's men in the final in Paris in October. The Wasps coach, Shaun Edwards, was linked with Ford's job of defense coach.

Andrew has decided to confine changes to the lower decks, where there will be new faces in the physiotherapy and analysis departments and the former England prop Graham Rowntree, widely praised in the review for the work he did on set pieces at the World Cup, will be given a full-time role.

The management board is unlikely to contest Andrew's conclusions, not least because of the wide-ranging nature of the review and the fact that the Six Nations is less than two months away. The coaches were criticized by Lawrence Dallaglio and Mike Catt, who compared the way England were organized in this year's World Cup to the 2003 campaign under Sir Clive Woodward, but the vast majority of players who filled in questionnaires after the tournament were supportive.

Ashton, Wells and Ford will be given one-year rolling contracts, as is the RFU's policy for all senior staff, and Andrew will review the set-up after the Six Nations, focusing on the need for a manager.

Robert Kitson, page 8 ...#8805;