The ousted chief executive leaves Twickenham confident that he did nothing wrong in his nine-month spell in the job
John Steele walked into the late-night meeting that would seal his fate still thinking that, despite a series of press briefings against him, he would be able persuade the Rugby Football Union board that his agenda of reform and modernisation was the right one. It was only a few minutes into the tense discussions that he realised he was wrong.
Armed with an inch-thick dossier on the behind-the-scenes campaign waged by some on the board to install Sir Clive Woodward as performance director, the chief executive laid a series of challenges at the door of the men who, at 1.30am, would dismiss him and plunge Twickenham into renewed civil war.
Steele's last stand was futile. Outside, the 82,000-seat stadium that played host to England's first Six Nations title-winning campaign in eight years was dark and the bars that had attracted record takings at the recent World Sevens event were silent. According to RFU insiders , Steele put his case forcefully, raising questions over financial forecasts signed off by the board before he joined and questioning their professionalism. But it did not take him long to realise he had reached the end. It was made clear that a majority of the board had lost confidence in him. A vote of no confidence in a paid official could not be taken, but when Steele did not receive the verbal support of the doves on the board, he knew he was beaten.
Steele's supporters believe the obsessive focus of his chairman, Martyn Thomas, on smoothing the return of Sir Clive Woodward ? the World Cup winning coach who has cast a long shadow over the RFU since leaving in 2004, despite a patchy record outside the sport since ? was only one element in his dismissal. It escalated into a fight over how the RFU is governed. Steele's supporters say that the board signed up to his manifesto for change but were unwilling to change itself. "The attitude of the board was 'Wash me, but don't get me wet', 'Change things but don't change me'," said one RFU official.
When the meeting broke up, Steele was a former chief executive of the RFU, almost a year to the day after he was appointed. He had not resigned and he had not been sacked. He had been ousted. He was at Twickenhamon Friday morning ? not at the pre-arranged council meeting, where some delegates expressed their anger, but in a room with Thomas and two sets of lawyers, negotiating the terms of his departure. At the council meeting, Thomas was braced for furious criticism.
What started as a bitter internal battle over the minutiae of a job description soon spiralled into civil war that has left the RFU looking for a third chief executive in a year, months before the World Cup in New Zealand. Perhaps more crucially, the fundamental overhaul of its structure and staffing put in place by Steele, with the goal of capitalising on hosting the 2015 World Cup, lies in tatters.
Steele, forced out of a job he had "always aspired to", insisted he had done nothing wrong. The interim verdict of an internal inquiry conducted by the RFU's head of governance, Peter Baines, backs him up, according to those who have seen it.
Thomas, the RFU chairman since 2005, is scheduled to stand down next year but will retain an influential role as chair of the 2015 World Cup board, and is used to pulling the strings. A qualified lawyer who has also been a farmer for more than 30 years, he was a key figure behind Steele's appointment in June last year, drawn to Steele's promise that he would put rugby at the centre of the RFU's operations after the commercial emphasis of the previous chief executive, Francis Baron.
Baron had turned the RFU from a loss-making organisation into the most profitable union in the world. Thomas felt the new chief executive should be someone with a strong rugby background. Steele, who played at fly-half for England A and was Northampton's coach when they won the Heineken Cup in 2000, was seen as the man who would set the tone for a successful World Cup in 2015.
Thomas and Baron had been close. Thomas's predecessor, Graeme Cattermole, had resigned in 2004 after an unsuccessful plot, codenamed Project George, to oust Baron. Thomas mended fences but the two fell out over the man who would blight Steele's tenure, Sir Clive Woodward.
Thomas saw the return of Woodward as a necessity after years of failure since the 2003 World Cup. Baron, mindful of Woodward's departure as England coach in 2004, when he used his farewell media conference to paint a damning picture of the way the game was being run, would not countenance it. He felt badly let down by Woodward.When he was interviewed for the chief executive's position Steele said he would be prepared to work with Woodward, who was seen by Thomas as the obvious candidate for the post of performance director. But once relations collapsed, Steele and Thomas found themselves at war.
Steele's fall from grace at the hands of the amateurs on the board and who hold the balance of power has been swift. There was a growing backlash yesterday among some RFU staff against the board, which was also given a hard time by some councillors. While Steele was not universally popular ? some thought he moved too swiftly to streamline the union ? most backed his changes and the last thing most want is another period of upheaval.
Ultimately Thomas, Bill Beaumont and others on the board will argue they lost faith in Steele over the performance-director issue. From the moment the chief executive's restructuring was rubber-stamped by the board in January, Thomas expected the role to go to Woodward. Steele was clear that he wanted to run a transparent process and was not wedded to Woodward, emphasising the role was as much about developing youth as it was about Martin Johnson's senior side.
Such was the assumption that the job was a shoo-in for Woodward, aided in no small part by briefing to the press from his supporters, that candidates withdrew. Steele, perhaps mistakenly, called a halt to the recruitment process because he did not want it to be a one-horse race, and proposed changing the job description to make it clear that working with the first-team would not be an element of the role. To confuse matters further, that would be reviewed after the World Cup.
Steele's statement was interpreted as an attempt to rule out Woodward, who saw the England element as a key part of the job. Thomas, who has spoken regularly to Woodward for some while, called an emergency board meeting which, by one vote, reinstated the old job description. Steele asked that the appointment panel, which he made up with Thomas and Beaumont, should be expanded by two, to remove any suspicion that Woodward had an in-built majority. Woodward, believing that Steele had resolved that he should not get the job and after having two interviews cancelled, announced in a carefully worded statement ? that left some wriggle room ? that he was staying with the British Olympic Association until the 2012 Games.
Thomas had agreed to official statements being released, to the effect that Steele had the board's backing and that lessons had been learned. But when Woodward said he was not interested in becoming the performance director, Steele came under renewed pressure.
Certain newspapers were briefed and ran condemnatory reports about Steele and a former RFU member, Fran Cotton, called for the chief executive to go. At some point this week a majority of board members decided that as long as Steele stayed as chief executive, Woodward would stay away from Twickenham.
Like Cotton, they came to the conclusion Steele had to go. Thursday's board meeting, which had been called last month, was the chosen time. Despite the anonymous briefings against him, Steele had angered his detractors by giving on-the-record interviews in which he admitted making mistakes but declared his attention to finish what he had started.
Steele's chief operating officer, Stephen Brown, hired from the healthcare firm Abbott, started his jobon Friday . A new commercial officer, Sophie Goldschmidt, from the NBA, was due to start next month. Three other senior executives are due to arrive in the next month. An internal note from Thomas yesterday attempted to calm staff and reassure them that Steele's structure would remain in place. But can they trust him?
Steele's departure has echoes of that of the former Football Association chief executive Ian Watmore. He also represented that organisation's best hope for reform and modernisation, but was forced out by vested interests and frustrated by judicious leaks.
Yesterday's was the latest in a series of badly handled departures at the RFU. Woodward's was one, followed by his successor as national coach, Andy Robinson, and then Brian Ashton, who was sacked six months after taking England to the World Cup final. Ashton's removal was another messy affair, with Johnson tapped up on the quiet and the coach kept in the dark.
The ousting of Steele means the hunt for a performance director will have to wait for the appointment of a new chief executive. That suits Woodward's supporters, as he has given a commitment to stay with the BOA until the end of the 2012 Olympics, although not necessarily in a full-time role.
There are some who felt that given all that has gone on, Woodward would be better suited as chief executive. Who else would want the job, given the way Steele has been treated? Outside the walls of Twickenham, the perception will remain that the RFU is run by amateurs.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jun/10/john-steele-rfu-chief-executive
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