FORMER England head coach John Kear claimed sacking Shaun Wane in the wake of the Ashes humbling would be little more than a panic measure.
The 3-0 series defeat to Australia, in which England were out-scored 70-18 on aggregate and managed just two tries in three matches, has led to calls for Wane’s axing ahead of next year’s Rugby League World Cup down under.
But Kear believes the three-time Super League grand final-winning boss has done enough previously to stay at the helm, despite the drubbing by the Kangaroos and the semi-final golden-point defeat to Samoa in the last World Cup on home soil.
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“I think he should keep it,” Kear, who oversaw England’s run to the 2000 World Cup semi-finals, told the League Express Podcast. “What you’re going to do if you get rid of him is bring someone else in who is going to have a different set of assistant coaches and it’s going to be a rebuild from foundation upwards.
“And you’ve got to put it in perspective – he did beat Samoa 2-0 [in 2024] and Tonga 3-0 [in 2023], and anyone who watched the Pacific Championship will see the standard of play over there.
“I think there has been progress made, and I think we’ve got to stick to that or else there’s a measure of us, as a nation and a governing body, panicking. I think you’ve got to back him and say ‘look, you’ve had a lot of success, there was a glitch here, let’s learn from that’.
“It needs to be a really thorough review before any decision is made, but I would certainly keep him otherwise we’re throwing the baby out with the bath water.”
Brisbane Broncos’ NRL grand-final winning coach Michael Maguire, who enjoyed a successful two-season spell in charge of Wane’s former club Wigan Warriors too, has been mentioned as a possible successor as have Wakefield Trinity head coach Daryl Powell and current Wigan boss Matt Peet.
But Kear put the gulf in class between England and Australia down to the differing levels of intensity between their respective domestic competitions plus State of Origin, regardless of who is in charge of the national team.
And the two-time Challenge Cup-winning head coach, whose international experience also includes 11 years in charge of Wales, believes that gap will be impossible to bridge unless changes are made in the British game.
“We haven’t got an Origin series coming up, whereas Australia have, and that will obviously influence the thoughts about it as their play-off series will in the build-up to the World Cup,” Kear said.
“We haven’t got that luxury of an Origin series and that’s one thing that needs looking at, to produce some high-intensity games.
“The high-intensity games in Australia, inevitably, are the Origin games, the games to get in the play-offs, and then the play-off games.
“I don’t think we can replicate that on a consistent enough basis, at the minute, to challenge them.”