England vs Uruguay RWC 2015: Meaningless match for Stuart Lancaster

The speculation and pressure continue to swirl around the England coach who will head for the Cumbrian hills after Saturday’s empty World Cup game against the Uruguayans

England coach Stuart Lancaster coaching youngsters in Manchester yesterday (Getty Images)

After the desolation has come the humiliation; the most desperate humiliation, for Stuart Lancaster’s England, of being transported in and out of the grounds of a five-star Manchester hotel in an air-conditioned luxury coach bearing the legend: #carrythemhome.

The Worsley Marriott has been occupied down the years by some swaggering European football teams with Sir Alex Ferguson’s boys in their sights, including a Bayern Munich who knocked United out five years ago. It was not built for such ignominy as this.

But all that was as nothing compared with the most excruciating moment, just after midday yesterday, when Lancaster was told, in plain view, that his employers appeared to have approached Nick Mallett, the former South Africa coach, about the England job. There was only the slightest inflection, the most faintly discernible mental recalibration, as he absorbed this and pursued the same fragments of detail that you or I would seek – the where and when – without the whole world detecting it.

“He’s been in contact with the RFU?” Lancaster asked. “I didn’t know that, to be honest. Guess it’s just the situation we’re in…” And later, within the sanctity of a more informal conversation: “When has that come out? That was a surprise to me. I was at training…”

Mallett indicated last night that comments he made at a breakfast hosted on Thursday by the Blue Bulls Super Rugby side had not been a response to an approach by the RFU. “I never said that I had been contacted by the RFU,” he said. “I said, ‘There has been a great deal of speculation around the England coaching job following England’s early exit from RWC.’ Somehow a journo here interpreted that as me saying I have been contacted…”

Mallett said rather more than that and this episode is the state of the world to come for Lancaster. His only solace beyond the meaninglessness of a match against Uruguay tonight is that he can grieve in private, come tomorrow night. The Cumbrian hills and coast are already beckoning.

I think I’ll be somewhere with no internet access. Scafell Pike, St Bees Head, that’s where I’ll be

&#13; <p>Stuart Lancaster, England head coach</p>&#13;

“I think I’ll be somewhere with no internet access. Scafell Pike, St Bees Head, that’s where I’ll be,” he said, rejecting most firmly the notion that he might fill the enormous hole which has materialised in his diary for the three weeks ahead by watching some World Cup rugby.

It was testament to the individual Lancaster is that he treated the Mallett information – which the RFU had neither alerted him to, nor denied, when raised – with equanimity. Many would have baulked. Some would have walked out of the room.

Just once in the course of a week in which he has placed himself in every press conference has he dealt back a hint of anger under the scrutiny of dissection. (The indignation was for Chris Robshaw, the captain he feels has unfairly borne the brunt). The full force of the Premiership rugby directors’ cheap and deeply undignified onslaught on him – Sale’s Steve Diamond’s talk of £2.50 Uruguay tickets doing the Manchester rounds, “no bulls****ing” – were met with considerably more deference than they merited.

Perhaps Lancaster will have observed the wink Wales’s Shaun Edwards offered when the notion of the England job was put to him. “Do you know what? I watched Australia play the other day on a couple of tapes, and I’ve got my hands full thinking about that at the moment, mate, to be honest,” he replied. No prizes for guessing which tape.

The storm blows on, with the words of Brian Smith, Martin Johnson’s 2011 attack coach, in today’s Independent as eviscerating as almost anything that has come his way.

I asked Lancaster on Thursday if he had imagined whether this highly conceivable outcome would be quite such a blizzard as this. “It depends how much of the blizzard you read, or you get involved in your snow goggles,” he replied. “The reality is I didn’t need to read it to know what was being said.”

He is talked out, truth to tell; patiently prepared to sieve back through the small details he has discussed 100 times over – yesterday, the overseas-player rule which excluded Steffon Armitage.

It was perhaps in the search for a different space that his talk drifted yesterday to the next Six Nations preparations for which, Lancaster being Lancaster, the small details are in place. Hotels booked. Preparation regimen laid out. He spoke of the training camp before playing Scotland, player release for that Premiership weekend, the relentless season to follow – back-to-back club rugby with the LV Cup removed from this season’s landscape.

Tonight’s opposition does him and his squad no favours. A last professional challenge, before what feels like the huge inevitability of someone else taking things on, would provide grounds for a last statement, at least. There will be a freer, more high-rolling look about the side picked to face the world’s 19th-ranked team – Alex Goode, Jack Nowell, Henry Slade, George Ford and Danny Care all come into the back line, with Owen Farrell switching to inside centre – but only a scoreline of the proportions South Africa ran up against the Americans would look anything above expectation.

Diamond’s daggers notwithstanding, Manchester at least offers a release from the oppressive place Twickenham has come to be across these past few weeks, with boos ringing out last Saturday night.

“It will be great to play up in the north, play at Manchester and feel some of that northern love,” said Care. “You can understand the fans’ frustration and there is no better place to play than Twickenham. We know that.”

Lancaster asked, in the mildest terms, for transparency from his employers. “The ideal scenario is that it is done privately and confidentially and the results are then made public. That might be quite hard, I think.”

He wrapped up shortly afterwards. “See you tomorrow, and then on Sunday,” he said, raising a smile. Sanctity and obscurity beckon and that will be bitter sweet. But the most interminable week of his life is almost over.