“The Management Board at its meeting on 26th March unanimously authorised Rob to continue discussions to strengthen the England management through the recruitment of a team manager and a specialist coach.

“We hope that Rob comes up with a structure that everybody buys into and we can build on what we have established and address the weakness we know exist.

“The proposal will set out in detail what the job description is (for the team manager) and how it fits into the Elite Rugby Department and the England team structure.

“The Board will have all the information to be able to take a view on the way forward and which appointments we are going to make.

“We have to then take a decision which we believe will strengthen England’s position and make it consistently more successful.

“I believe Rob is going to present a very thoroughly well thought out proposal to the Board. But the existing coaches have all got to be happy with the new structure. There are some feisty individuals in our coaching team who will no doubt express strong views.

“They are all under contract to the senior team. There will be a new structure and new faces and people have to accept that but it is aimed at improving the consistency of England’s performance. I hope they want to be part of the structure going forward. 

“I envisage the new structure coming into play co-incidentally with the new agreement on elite rugby on July 1.

“In terms of the talent coming through, we won the Under 18s Grand Slam, the Under 20s Six Nations Grand Slam, when they weren’t able to field their strongest side because half a dozen where playing in the Premiership, and the Saxons were unbeaten...so it’s not all doom and gloom.

“The bit we are currently addressing is the England senior team because I believe that if we can get that piece in place we have a great structure.”

Management Board chairman Martyn Thomas added: “Brian has done incredibly well. No-one would have said beforehand that England would have got to a World Cup final and we came second in the Six Nations.

“But this season will always be remembered as Wales’ and the World Cup will be South Africa’s. There are no prizes in life for coming second and the RFU is determined to drive England back to where we believe it should be. Our goal and ambition is to be No 1 in the world.”

Baron added that the first meeting of the Professional Game Board governing elite rugby in England would take place on Thursday April 10 ahead of the RFU-Premier Rugby Ltd agreement coming into legal force on July 1.

Elite Referees Manager elect Ed Morrison outlined that the RFU were formulating a position on the Experimental Law Variations currently being trialled in the Southern Hemisphere from both the elite and community ends of the game in England. This would then form part of a Six Nations consensus on ELVs to the International Rugby Board for it's meeting on 1st May 2008.

Morrison said: “We don’t want to lose many of the many facets of the game that make it unique but to look at our game and say nothing needs to change is naïve. However, we have concerns on the ELVs regarding the sanctions*, the lineout and collapsing the maul and I am sure that other unions around the world share those.”

Thomas explained that the RFU was assisting with seeking to assure the future of National League One club Coventry, who have been experiencing financial difficulties.

The RFU’s success in tackling black market tickets and unofficial hospitality was explained by Business Operations Director Paul Vaughan.

“We have seen operators going out of the market, we have taken legal action against a number and in particular in obtaining an injunction against one, Racing + Ball, who before the Ireland match had sold in the order of 600 packages were they were unable to deliver the whole package. They took somewhere in the region of half a million in exchange for nothing," said Vaughan.

“We came across 50 forged tickets for the Ireland game which, although good forgeries, didn’t get through our gates. We are also investigating about 70 cases of misuse of tickets from clubs and individuals, which will probably amount to about 150 tickets.”

RFU Community Rugby Director Andrew Scoular revealed the success of the 'Go Play' adult recruitment campaign which resulted in 9420 adults returning to rugby – 57 per cent above the target of 6,000.

“It was a great achievement by those involved,” said Scoular. “The campaign has been shortlisted by the Sports Industry Awards for the Best Promotion by a Sports Governing Body and hopefully we will be successful at the awards evening on May 1st.

“The key thing for us is how to we hold on to those 9,500 and to retain in other areas of the game. Next year we will have a programme called 'Play On'. We lose players between school and university and after university and we are putting a network in place for that 16-24 age group to ensure they stay within the game.”  

Ends…

*For all offences other than offside, not entering through the gate at the breakdown, and foul play, the sanction is a free kick.