Graphic: 2011 Rugby World Cup draw

There is little enough to comfort England after an autumn of discontent and, although yesterday’s World Cup pool draw in London did its best, an old adversary added fuel to the flames. The present England side “haven’t got a coherent understanding of how to attack and their defence is poor,” Eddie Jones, the former Australia coach, said.

Jones, now director of rugby at Saracens, highlights a lack of clarity at the top of English rugby as well as below the Guinness Premiership surface. If Martin Johnson is the team manager, Jones asked, then who is the head coach? “Someone has to take responsibility for coaching the team,” he added after a November in which England have conceded 102 points in three matches.

While Johnson himself was digesting the implications of a World Cup pool for the tournament to be staged in New Zealand in 2011 that includes Argentina and Scotland — well away from New Zealand and South Africa, who administered defeats by 26 points and 36 points respectively at Twickenham in the past fortnight — Jones accused the RFU of making no elite player development since winning the World Cup five years ago.

“That team was always going to break up,” he said. “Now you have experienced players and inexperienced players and nothing in between. That’s because the structure of the game here doesn’t allow young players to develop. You haven’t got a second-tier competition.”

Johnson has fiercely defended his coaching team and will do so again today when he reviews England’s poor autumn. His team’s failure to beat any of the Sanzar teams left them out of a top-four seeding in yesterday’s draw. “You take what you get,” he said. “The draw doesn’t change anything. If you want to get to the last week of a World Cup, you have got to beat the best in the world. We want to win the Test matches we’re playing now, we’re not picking a team for the World Cup.”

England play Argentina three times next year, twice on tour and once at Twickenham; Scotland visit Argentina in 2010 and have, of course, their annual battles with England in the RBS Six Nations Championship. When they last played Argentina and Scotland, England lost, by seven points to the Pumas at Twickenham two years ago and 15-9 at Murrayfield last March; their next meeting with Scotland is on March 21 and they play two internationals with Argentina in June with a squad deprived of players chosen by the Lions to tour South Africa.

Were England, who were in the same pool as Argentina in the 1995 tournament, to top their pool in 2011, they would play the runners-up of pool A, possibly France, in the quarter-finals. If they finish second, they would surely have to play the All Blacks, which, at this distance, does not look a wonderful option. Apart from the challenges posed by Scotland and Argentina, their pool will probably include the likes of Georgia or Romania (Europe 1) and Spain or perhaps Uruguay (the play-off winner).

Scotland’s only previous clash in a World Cup with England was the 1991 semi-final. “We have a decent young squad which hasn’t reached its potential yet,” Frank Hadden, their head coach, said.

Overall, the pool draw offers moments to savour: New Zealand’s encounter with France, their nemesis in the quarter-finals last year; Wales go up once more against Fiji, who ensured their exit from the 2007 tournament at the pool stage; South Africa, the holders, will respect Wales and remember that Fiji gave them a hard time in last year’s quarter-finals.

Wales, the market leaders in Europe at the moment, may also have Samoa in their pool and Warren Gatland, the head coach, gave warning that New Zealanders will be vocal in their support of Fiji and Samoa. Ireland, meanwhile, meet Australia for the third time in pool play — they also lost a dramatic quarter-final in 1991 in Dublin — and will believe they have a good chance of heading pool C.