By Kath 4/3/04
March 4 2004

Sir Clive Woodward England's Head Coach talks to Zurich's Andrew Titheridge about England's strength in depth and his favourite game?

For immediate release: 4 March 2004
Issued on behalf of Zurich

Zurich Report with Clive Woodward
Speaking on www.zurichpremiership.com

Andrew Titheridge:   Clive, England rugby generally is in good shape and as players retire new players come in. A good example is Matt Stevens, not that Jason Leonard has retired, but that a young player is there to take his place and there are lots of players in the Zurich Premiership ready to step up?

Sir Clive Woodward:   There's no doubt about that.  

I know England won the World Cup with a very experienced team and you only get experience by starting somewhere, and we need young players.  When a player like Bracken steps down, you've got to look elsewhere so you look a lot closer at the Ellis's, the Wood's, and these sorts of players.

The time not to groom players is in a World Cup or even in the year of a World Cup. That's the time you nail your colours to a group of players and go into that tournament knowing that you've got the most experienced team and most experienced captain, knowing that you're the team to beat.  But you've actually got to start somewhere and you can't get experience
overnight.

That's why yesterday we mentioned the A team and its most important to keep that to gain experience. Obviously playing for England and getting involved in what we do is great experience.  All these things add up and I'm delighted with the England programme, its very settled from where it used to be when I started.

We've got the Six Nations, we go overseas in the summer for a month's play and meet the top sides in the World in Australia, South African and New Zealand.

Then we've got them again in the Autumn, and that does give us a proper international 12 month calendar, to plan and get players experienced. If we're serious about winning these tournaments, experience counts, but on the way you may have to play a game where you're not as experienced as the other big sides. Sometimes you have to cut your losses on the way to those things.

I'm very confident of what we've done in the last few years and my favourite game was when England beat Argentina away.  Hardly any team had won in Buenos Aires when we had a very young inexperienced team and won, and many of those players have come through and are our main players now.

ENDS