The question most asked about Rob Andrew in the two years of his tenure as the RFU's director of elite rugby is: what exactly does he do? Yesterday Andrew was at pains to point out the size, scope and efficiency of the elite department that he heads compared with the “absolute shambles” he found on arrival in 2006.

The theme at Twickenham was the linkage designed to restore England to global supremacy, the position last enjoyed when the national team were world champions in 2003. The aim is to hand down the playing maxims of England's senior squad to the Saxons and age-grade sides - under-20, under-18 and under-16 - who, between them, lost only one match of 24 last season.

“You judge things on results,” Andrew said, “and in September 2006 we were on the way to losing eight out of nine. This is why [my department] was created, as a fully integrated elite rugby department working across all the issues.”

Roy Headey, who leads the RFU's sports science team, said that the model was the British cycling squad whose gold-medal haul so illuminated the Beijing Olympic Games, while Stuart Lancaster, the head of elite player development, used Danny Care, the Harlequins scrum half capped in New Zealand in June, as an example of a player, who, working his way through the representative ranks, found it frustrating to receive different messages with each succeeding team.

“We think we have done a very good job in the last two years in pulling the structures together,” Andrew said. “We have gone through a period of incredible decline between 2003-06. I'm not making any speculative comments about what anyone did or didn't do, but when I walked in, the game was in an absolute shambles.

“The clubs and the RFU were at war and, later that season [2006-07], the clubs were boycotting Europe. It's not for me to comment who should or shouldn't have done whatever. But there was no sign of what direction we should be going in, no sign of building a relationship with the clubs. If there was a [World Cup] legacy, can anyone tell me what is was? If we do our job properly, we should never fall far from the position we were in, [that of] world champions. Where did we fall to? Eighth in the world.”

Andrew's critique reflects as much on his present employers, the RFU, as on any one individual such as Sir Clive Woodward, the World Cup-winning head coach, one of whose backroom staff, Phil Pask, the physiotherapist, was restored to the England medical team yesterday.

Andrew also confirmed that Guinness Premiership clubs who average 14 England-qualified players out of a match squad of 22 in the coming season will receive £14,000 per player on top of the financial recompense for those players named in England's elite squad.