There’s a lot of presumptions in this article, I can’t pretend that there’s not, but let’s work on the (not unreasonable) assumption that the RFU are looking for an Englishman to replace him. Looking at the contenders in the Premiership, there’s…well, to be honest, not a lot. Of the twelve Premiership clubs, the English head coaches amount to just four - Nigel Melville at Gloucester, Andy Keast at Worcester, John Wells at Leicester, and a Mr Andrew. Add to these Andy Robinson, in his current position as England coach, and the pair recently departed from the Premiership of Dean Richards and Jim Mallinder, and you have a somewhat limited choice.

Personally, I would make Mallinder the favourite if Robinson doesn’t move upstairs - he has experience in the Team England ethic through coaching the A squad to the last two Churchill Cup finals, and probably more importantly, he’s available at very short notice without compensation having to be paid to his club. Experience wise, there is one name that stands out, and you have to keep coming back to it. Rob Andrew. Charismatic (some would say) ex-England international who’s been coaching for eight years. Against that, there is the thought that he would shake up the RFU, and the committee men may not take too kindly to that.

But then isn’t that what Woodward did? And isn’t there now a World Cup sitting at Twickenham?

What would Rob’s departure mean for Falcons? Well, the Andrew supporters would point at the service he has given the club, lifting it (albeit with the help at first of Sir John Hall, and more recently Dave Thompson) to a league title, two Powergen Cups and the growth of rugby in an area previously thought impossible to have a professional side in, let alone to get people watching it. They’d also point at the squad that he has developed, much of it from youth rugby, and bringing the likes of Wilkinson, Noon, Stephenson, May, Dowson and Tait on to being established and rising stars with further England honours just round the corner. You could also point at the likelihood of Jonny Wilkinson becoming the new England captain, and the relationship between England fly-halves past and present, as a tick in the Andrew column.

The Andrew detractors (of which there are many, particularly around the country) would point at the fact that the league title was seven seasons ago, without the prospect of another one, and with a team that last season couldn’t win away from home and struggled to gain victories at Kingston Park. They’d also point to the fact that his public face is one of a man that always seems to have to have things going his own way, and as one person commented to me today, “someone who stamps his feet and sulks when he can’t”. Would the country’s rugby supporters get behind him? It appears that looking around the Sport Network sites this afternoon that they would not, and they would be waiting for him to fail so that they could stick the knife in.

The man himself has said that the job doesn’t interest him at the moment, and that he’s merely concentrating on and looking forward to taking the Falcons into the season. But you just have to think that it’s an opportunity to take England into the next World Cup, as holders, and defend it. The precedent has been set; look at the adulation given to Woodward and his players just ten months ago.

If he were offered the job, could he really turn it down?

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