![\"England](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0__AM20330.jpg\")
England boss Shaun Wane remains contracted through to the 2026 Rugby League World Cup. SWPix.<\/p>\nWane’s future is unclear after the Ashes.England boss Shaun Wane remains contracted through to the 2026 Rugby League World Cup. SWPix.<\/p>\n
Shaun Wane will discover his future in the coming weeks as the RFL work through a performance evaluation following the Ashes series.<\/p>\n
The England head coach oversaw a 3-0 series defeat to Australia, with the governing body now undergoing a routine review of the series before they make a decision on whether to keep Wane in post or head in a different direction.<\/p>\n
There have been indications that a decision could be made before Christmas, though RFL CEO Abi Ekoku did not go as far as confirming a timeline when speaking to the media this week.<\/p>\n
“At the end of each series; and it’s been like that at the RFL for a long time, there’s a performance evaluation,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It would be disrespectful to everybody involved in that process not to get their feedback, which comes from Shaun as well as an RFL employee.<\/p>\n
“Once that’s all in, that decision will be made. There’ll be no prevarication over it. It’s international sport. It means you judge at the highest levels and there shouldn’t be any hesitation. There’s a World Cup next year, so you want certainty as to decision-making, so planning can be done.”<\/p>\n
Ekoku went on to suggest that the role could be a part-time position moving forward. There is no mid-season international this year and limited contact time with the group in season.<\/p>\n
“There’s no urgency, the Kangaroos didn’t have a coach until the summer, the England football manager’s job is a part-time job theoretically, so you look at things in different ways.<\/p>\n
“That’s no diminution of international rugby; it’s been proven this year how important it is to our public, and that’s been the great thing about this year. It’s reignited that desire and push. There’s consumer pressure on the game to create more international opportunities.”<\/p>\n
The decision not to make space for an international fixture in the season has been criticised in some quarters, but Ekoku explained: “Can England have a meaningful mid-season international if you can’t get the release of NRL players?<\/p>\n
“International sport is a rough, tough environment. What you can offer at the centre as a governing body to players coming from the top clubs is always less than they get at a club. You’re not as good as a club.<\/p>\n
“Shaun is a fantastic coach and he’s been a very successful Super League coach, but what can he impart in the middle of a season?<\/p>\n
“By getting the players together and having some camaraderie and feel-good is fantastic, but to run a physical training session and programme mid-season, when Shaun was head coach at Wigan, I’m not sure that he would’ve been supportive of that.<\/p>\n
“And if you’re not playing a fixture, what’s the physiological benefit of it?”<\/p>\n
He continued: “I’m a massive internationalist in that sense, but there’s got to be a practicality to it as well. What rugby union has done with its Autumn Internationals is brilliant. It’s lively, it’s vibrant, it’s a really good international series.<\/p>\n
“But we’re not rugby union. I don’t think in our lifetime we will have centrally contracted players. I’m a realist, I just don’t think it’s worth pandering after something that’s never going to be delivered, because it takes two parties and the NRL will never release their players.<\/p>\n
“We might want it, but it’s never going to be a reality.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wane’s future is unclear after the Ashes.England boss Shaun Wane remains contracted through to the 2026 Rugby League…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-341359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}