Martin Johnson breaks silence to defend England's 2011 World Cup disaster

The former manager acknowledged that his squad were 'caught out off the field' in New Zealand

Martin Johnson, close to invisible and all but silent since quitting as England manager in the toxic aftermath of the 2011 World Cup implosion, reappeared in public today to defend his record. Johnson admitted to misjudgements during his time in charge, but argued that coverage of the national team’s campaign in New Zealand – especially the infamous drunken night out in Queenstown – was distorted.

According to the man who led England to their first and only global title in 2003 but found management infinitely more challenging than captaincy, supporters were left with the wrong impression of events in All Black country. “The worst thing was the way the game got dragged through the mud,” said Johnson, acting as a sponsor’s ambassador for next year’s home World Cup. “It wasn’t actually a true reflection of… what we were about, but you’re fighting a tidal wave at that point, with everyone ‘knowing’ what’s happened because they’ve read about it.”

He compared the 2011 experience with the infinitely happier one eight years earlier. “Once you’ve won the World Cup, everything is portrayed as being great, as being a perfect working machine. But of course, it wasn’t,” he said.

“We were all human beings – we all made mistakes, had our frailties and did similar things to the boys in 2011. It just… didn’t get recorded. And then you win, so everything is all right.”

Johnson acknowledged that his England squad were “caught out off the field” in New Zealand. “We were aware of what could happen and warned the players, but it still happened,” he remarked. “The disappointment was that it was something we fell into, even though we knew it was there. You think you have it covered off when maybe you don’t have it covered off. The difficult thing is that it was perceived as something that it wasn’t, really. I’m not saying things didn’t happen, but it became the story rather than the rugby.

“Looking back at it, of course I would have done things differently. But we can all do that. People say, ‘It was a disaster at the World Cup’, but England have won one Six Nations in the last 11 years and that was in 2011. We won 10 out of 13 games that year and brought through a lot of players: Dan Cole, Alex Corbisiero, Courtney Lawes, Tom Wood, Ben Youngs, Chris Ashton, Ben Foden and Manu Tuilagi all came through.”

London Welsh, marooned at the bottom of the Premiership after three heavy defeats, face a must-win game with a brittle Gloucester outfit at the Kassam Stadium in Oxford on Friday night – their first home fixture since the calamitous performance against Exeter on the opening weekend.

“We all felt our performance in that match was unacceptable and that we let a lot of people down,” said Justin Burnell, the head coach, who has recalled the veteran midfielder Tom May to the starting line-up. Gloucester, still in the early stages of a comprehensive rebuild, have the England challenger Matt Kvesic on the open-side flank.