Johnson: Clubs’ failures not relevant

MARTIN JOHNSON warned against writing off England’s RBS 6 Nations title chances just because English clubs have struggled in Europe this season.

Northampton are the only one from seven Guinness Premiership clubs to have qualified for the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup. But Johnson insisted there is no correlation between that disappointment and England’s ambitions of winning their first championship title since 2003.

“In an ideal world we’d have three or four teams there (in the quarter-finals) because it is good for the players, but we haven’t,” Johnson said at yesterday’s competition launch in London.