That sound you hear is the starting pistol being fired on the 2027 international rugby coach merry-go-round. The coaching landscape for every major Test-playing nation \u2013 New Zealand aside \u2013 appears to be settled up to the Rugby World Cup in Australia next year. But beyond that is anyone\u2019s guess and, as of Thursday morning, it looks much more unsettled after news out of Ireland.<\/p>\n
Certainly, we know that contracts for the coaches at almost all of those nations are not currently extended beyond the World Cup. In the current top five of the men\u2019s world rankings \u2013 South Africa, France, Ireland, New Zealand and England \u2013 only Rassie Erasmus of the Springboks is under contract for beyond next year\u2019s tournament, and the All Blacks currently do not even have a head coach. There is likely to be plenty of movement, perhaps not in the short term, but certainly in the medium to long.<\/p>\n
Then on Wednesday, the Irish Independent reported that Mike Prendergast, Munster\u2019s senior coach and assistant to Clayton MacMillan, was being targeted by Bath as the reigning Prem champions\u2019 next attack guru. That was the beginning of the Irish ripple; the next day, Munster confirmed that news but only after the big wave arrived, with the same outlet reporting that Saracens<\/a> were lining up a return for Andy Farrell after the World Cup, on a salary of more than \u00a31m a year. Saracens played down the move with a statement on Thursday night.<\/p>\n \u201cSaracens would like to address recent media speculation linking Andy Farrell with a coaching role at the club,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n \u201cAndy has not discussed his future with anyone on the board or ownership group of Saracens and we can categorically state, despite numerous reports to the contrary in the press, that no offer has been made to Andy.<\/p>\n \u201cAndy has long-standing and deep personal ties to Saracens. He represented the club as a player between 2005 and 2009 and remains closely affiliated with the club through his family, as the father of Owen Farrell, one of the most significant players in Saracens\u2019 history and a current member of the squad.<\/p>\n \u201cThe misguided reporting is disrespectful to Brendan Venter who will be assuming the DOR responsibilities from Mark McCall at the end of the 25\/26 season. It is also disrespectful to Andy and the IRFU.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven Andy\u2019s close relationship with Saracens, the club looks forward to welcoming him to more home fixtures once the Six Nations Championship has concluded.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That sound you hear is the starting pistol being fired on the 2027 international rugby coach merry-go-round. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3483,7166,48283,162538,5903,23451,8631,162539,217,101,5438,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-448200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-andy-farrell","tag-england-rugby-union-team","tag-gallagher-premiership","tag-ireland-rugby-union-team","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-union","tag-rugby-world-cup","tag-saracens-rugby","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}