Johnno: World Cup my career low point
Johnson, who stood down as team manager last week, launched a passionate defence of his squad and coaching team in the wake of some fierce player criticism. Three confidential reports into England’s World Cup campaign have been leaked, and the excerpts made tough reading for Johnson.
“Of course it is not great to see those bits. It was one of the worst things I have experienced in the game,” Johnson said.
“You don’t like seeing criticism of people, of yourself, of players. Do not take the extreme opinion written in extreme circumstances as fact.
“You are frustrated because what is being reported is not anywhere near the truth of it. From my point of view that is a fact. That is not what happened.”
The reports paint the picture of a dysfunctional England squad, riven by a lack of trust with some players motivated more by money than by ambition. Based on anonymous quotes contained within the Rugby Players’ Association report, Johnson’s coaching team was out of their depth.
But Johnson insisted the printed opinions are selective and do not represent the true culture of the squad.
“They are opinions, they are certainly not truths, written in an emotive time for everyone post a tournament,” Johnson said.
“The way it has been reported, the imbalance of that report to me is one of the worst things because in that report, there is obviously praise for certain parts and certain people.
“My frustration is that this is not an accurate reflection of that team, the people or the attitude and I couldn’t sit here this week and let what is opinion become accepted as truth because that is not right.
“Certain actions by certain players did let the group down and led us to be portrayed as something we weren’t and something they aren’t.
“We didn’t help that at the time so of course there were frustrations.
“But, as a coaching group, we didn’t feel it was having a huge effect on us as we went through to the final games.”
But the disastrous campaign seems to keep rumbling on and Johnson refuted claims the Rugby Football Union pressured three players into paying nearly €17,500 in compensation money to a hotel worker.
James Haskell, Chris Ashton and Dylan Hartley were accused of alleged verbal sexual harassment at the team’s Dunedin hotel.
The alleged victim, Annabel Newton, reportedly threatened to sell her story to a newspaper.
In the leaked report one of the players said “paying the money seemed to be the advice” and “another option wasn’t really given” by the RFU. England’s travelling QC, Richard Smith, was accused of being more “interested in defending the RFU’s reputation than ours”.
The three players refused to pay, insisting they “hadn’t done what she claimed we had done”.
But Johnson insisted the RFU did not try and lead the players into paying up.
“They were clearly given the options and the number one thing they were told they must do was to get their own independent legal advice because they had to be happy with what they were going to do,” Johnson said.
“If someone says to you ‘I would like compensation or I may sell my story to the papers’, that is not particularly nice to be involved with.
“The first thing we said was that you need to get some independent legal advice. These are the options that are open to you, none of which were great.”
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