The RFU have denied contacting potential replacements for Stuart Lancaster

Bath coach Mike Ford has ruled himself out of the England job if Stuart Lancaster is fired or resigns after the World Cup.

A review into England’s failure to reach the knockout phase will begin next week and Lancaster – described by scrum-half Danny Care as a “fighter” and contracted until 2020 – may yet decide his reign must not end here.

It would have caused a major row if it turned out that the RFU had sounded out a prospective replacement with Lancaster still in charge and preparing England for their dead Pool A match against Uruguay at Manchester City’s Etihad ground today.

Any fans’ or followers’ hurt will be absolutely nothing in comparison to England’s head coach’s, he is the man that the buck stops at and the man that knows that potentially his job will be taken from him as a result of the last three weeks.

“I think there has been a bit of assassination by the media, really”, Gatland said. While All Blacks coach Steve Hansen says they are keeping a few tricks in the bag for their title defense, one can’t help notice the basic mistakes and aging players’ performances costing many scoring opportunities.

“I absolutely feel sympathy for what’s happening to Stuart”, said the New Zealander, who phoned him this week.

“The last conversation I had with him, he was going to extend his contract with us and he wanted to go for the next World Cup”.

I think people underestimate the complexity of how injuries, form, fitness, the EPS agreement, having so many players and the must-win game nature of England rugby affect the decisions you’ve got to make.

“The United States maybe don’t have the experience yet to finish teams at this level but they will believe they can beat us if Japan can”. “The whole objective of them is to get better”.

“I’ve had feedback from players who have worked with Andy outside of England who are British and Irish Lions and they found him to be an outstanding coach, person and leader”. I saw it and I had a good chat with both of them, everybody shook hands and it was all done in a short space of time and we all moved on.

“For us, (coach) Heyneke (Meyer) has been hammering the point that we are under pressure and we have our backs against the wall and every game is now a final for us”.

“Yes, back in my day we did have a lot of leaders”, he added, many of which had learned from the pain of losing in 1999 to South Africa in the quarter finals. Following the conclusion of Saturday’ test match there will be a review of all aspects of England Rugby.