The head coach of last year\u2019s British and Irish Lions tour would be the standout candidate to take over at Twickenham should it be decided by either Borthwick or the RFU that change is needed, but no discussions have taken place.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s under contract to the 2027 World Cup,” Sweeney (below) said of Farrell. “We\u2019re not in a dialogue. We\u2019re not in a discussion with him at the present.”<\/p>\n
![\"LONDON,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0024205c-614.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
The review of England\u2019s Six Nations will be completed by the end of next month and is being conducted by an anonymous panel of figures drawn from inside and outside the RFU with Sweeney, director of performance rugby Conor O\u2019Shea and non-executive director Ben Kay among those involved.<\/p>\n
Players and Borthwick\u2019s assistant coaches are also being canvassed for their opinions on why the same team that registered their 12th successive victory when routing Wales in round one then collapsed to their worst ever Six Nations performance.<\/p>\n
Although the review has yet to reach any conclusions on the events of the past few weeks, Sweeney\u2019s inclination is to give Borthwick more time with England\u2019s stirring performance against France in the climax to the tournament pointing to a brighter future.<\/p>\n
“There is a lot of noise out there,” Sweeney said. “You\u2019ve got to take emotion out of the equation. You just look at it purely in terms of: What was the performance? What were the issues? Why did they arise? And how do we fix them?<\/p>\n
“I see the outcome being for us to make sure we have got the right support mechanisms in place to address them and support Steve to get that right going forward.<\/p>\n
“We are really focussed on seeing progress again and seeing better and more consistent performances. That is the focus \u2013 it\u2019s not a set number of wins or a percentage.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s about getting back to the way we were playing. Steve talks about playing big. That has been the intention and you saw that against France.<\/p>\n
“We still think this is an extremely strong squad that has got the potential and capability to do some really good things.”<\/p>\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Rugby podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>, and email us at sportpodcasts@rte.ie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rugby Football Union chief executive Bill Sweeney insists there has been no contact with Ireland head coach Andy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-368326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}