5 Things on Nigel Melville's to-Do List for English Rugby

Nigel Melville was swiftly announced in April as the successor to Rob Andrew for the job of director of professional rugby in England, per RFU.com.

The former Wasps scrum-half will arrive from his role as CEO of USA rugby and will oversee, according to the Union: "Professional rugby in England for the RFU, with particular focus around managing the relationship with Premiership Rugby, the English Qualified Player scheme, the EPS agreement and the academy system."

Melville arrives with England having bounced out of their lowest point after a disastrous 2015 Rugby World Cup to claim a Grand Slam Six Nations title in 2016.

But that's not to say he is strolling into a garden where it's all rosy.

There is plenty in the in-tray for the incoming man, so let's take a look at some of the most pressing items on Melville's agenda.

In his new role, Melville will be overseeing the production line of English talent flowing through the academy system into the national setup.

Academies recruit from schools in their designated geographical areas, per the RFU's outline, and it’s here the net needs to be widened.

Before the 2015 Rugby World Cup, Ben Dirs of BBC Sport pointed out that 20 of the 31-man England squad had been at least partly educated at fee-paying schools compared to 11 of the squad who won the 2003 World Cup.

He also cited an Ofsted report compiled in 2014 that discovered 61 per cent of the Premiership’s players are educated at independent schools.

Rugby Union has always struggled to shake off its elitist image, and these sort of statistics don’t help. Furthermore, if the academies are not at least looking into the pool of potential in the state school sector with the right amount of rigour, they are denying themselves and the game as a whole the chance to draw on a fresh pool of talent.

Melville is coming from a governing body where recruitment of talent is an uphill battle against the big American sports and must have learned a trick or two at encouraging youngsters considering their options to take rugby seriously.

Now, having swapped the Eagle for the Red Rose, he needs to encourage the academies to reach beyond the traditional hunting grounds to broaden rugby’s player demographic.

Rob Andrew had the nickname "Squeaky" during his playing days, despite the rebellious move he made late in his career to join the nouveau riche of Sir John Hall’s Newcastle Falcons. He even wrote a report on how to restructure the season that was promptly ignored by the RFU, per Eddie Butler in the Guardian.

But once inside the confines of Rugby House at Twickenham, Andrew became a company man, shifting job title as England’s on-field fortunes took a tumble and eventually staying well away from any media duties.

Stuart Barnes wrote on Skysports.com:

Andrew lost the faith of the general public and the media for not taking greater responsibility since his appointment in 2011. What I will say is that he had to take a share of criticism as a central protagonist in the appointments of Martin Johnson and Stuart Lancaster. Both were bad appointments for differing reasons.

Melville arrives with a reputation for being far more affable with the media, per Nick Westby in the Yorkshire Evening Post:

Ask yourself, how many times did you see him (Rob Andrew) quoted or hear him interviewed in the last 10 years of steady and often alarming decline at the top of the game? How many times did the need for answers go unheeded? The man who will replace Andrew this summer, Nigel Melville, is someone who, from my limited experience, is completely the opposite and has been only too happy to talk.

Eddie Jones will doubtless do enough talking for the entire Rugby Football Union, so Melville needn’t feel the pressure to keep a high profile, but when he is called upon to raise his head above the parapet, he should leave the tin hat and flak jacket at home.

One of the central planks of the job is to negotiate the terms of the deal over elite players between clubs and country.

In this, Andrew has done well and will see the next extension of the agreement over the line before he leaves so Melville won’t be dropped straight into a live exercise as far as bartering for the next arrangement is concerned.

There will be bumps in the road, of course, such as the next time an English player excels in an overseas league and the clamour for his inclusion grows to fever pitch.

But that scenario is less likely when England are winning. So far, Eddie Jones has had that covered.

With a remit going from the top of the pro game down through to academy level, Melville is well-placed to assess the scope of the concussion problem in the English game.

It is not a problem confined to these levels of the game, as the tragic case of Ben Robinson showed, and it is a live issue all the way down the rugby pyramid.

Melville should take the opportunity to help set the standards high as far as obeying current protocols go and acting upon any further research-based results into the issue.

In doing so, he will raise awareness at all levels of the sport about the real dangers of ignorance over head injuries.

Coming from the USA, who threw a few decent shots but never landed a knockout blow on any of the big boys while he was at the helm, Melville is well-placed to give chapter and verse on how the top-tier nations can help those below them raise their standards.

The example of Japan’s stunning 2015 World Cup has alerted the rugby world to the potential for the nations below the cream to rise to the challenge.

Melville’s appreciation of life at the lower levels, combined with Eddie Jones’ success with the Blossoms, may just be a winning combination when it comes to offering a few more meaningful fixtures to nations such as the USA and Georgia in order for them to continue their progression.