England's management plea for patience

By Mitch Phillips

LONDON (Reuters) - England have fallen off the pace in the world game although their new wave of players will come through given time to develop, director of elite rugby Rob Andrew and manager Martin Johnson said on Tuesday.

The pair held a post-mortem at Twickenham after thumpings by Australia, South Africa and New Zealand and agreed the last month was a necessary tough first hurdle on a long journey.

"We said when we appointed Martin that it was a three-year project," Andrew said. "That's why we changed the RFU contract structure and gave him a fixed contract up to December 2011 because we know what is required. There is a lot of work to do.

"It has only been four weeks. It's a process you have to start. We haven't got an old guard to go back to like we did in the last World Cup," he told reporters.

"If you compare the caps from the starting teams on Saturday we had 275 and New Zealand had 647. No side in the world has lost the experience we have since the 2007 World Cup."

England suffered their biggest defeat in a match at Twickenham when the Springboks won 42-6, their worst there against the All Blacks with Saturday's 32-6 reverse and their second-worst home loss to Australia when they went down 28-14.

It was a harsh welcome to the world of coaching for Johnson, who began his stint with an encouraging win over the Pacific Islanders.

"When you are starting out there is going to be inconsistency but I didn't expect to lose by the margins we did," he said.  Continued...