WHEN crucial decisions are made this week over the reshaping of the England coaching team, the RFU’s decision-makers could play into the hands of their most-vaunted opponents.

The Times can reveal that Dave Alred, one of England’s posse of coaches who may be relieved of their jobs, was approached last year to go to work for New Zealand.

The approach from the All Blacks came before the start of the 2005 RBS Six Nations Championship. It was their intention that Alred should swap allegiances after he had finished his stint in New Zealand last summer with the Lions. Alred turned down the offer out of loyalty to the England cause, but there can be little doubt that he would be the recipient of job offers in such similarly elevated heights within the game if the RFU does decide that he is no longer required by England.

Alred would have been extremely well-known to the All Blacks coaching staff. He worked as specialist kicking coach to Graham Henry, now the New Zealand head coach, in 2001, when Henry was leading the Lions in Australia. Alred also worked at Franklin’s Gardens when Wayne Smith was Northampton coach, before Smith headed back to the other side of the world to join Henry’s staff.

Alred was the first man in rugby union to make the coaching of kicking his specialism and he has long been regarded as the No 1 in the field, although he also works in other areas of the game, particularly mental preparation. Rob Andrew, the Newcastle Falcons director of rugby, employs him regularly and in the past few days Alred has done sessions with Leicester and with Olly Barkley at Bath. His most famous student is Jonny Wilkinson, who works with him regularly and said yesterday: “To my mind, he is without doubt the best kicking coach in the world.”

Alred is known to be an awkward character, but there is little doubt over his credibility. So questions will certainly be asked of the RFU’s decision-making bodies if a man they sack is snapped up immediately by the world’s No 1 rugby nation. However, Alred has had to sit by and watch his future being debated in the media since the RBS Six Nations concluded with England’s defeat by Ireland at Twickenham five weeks ago. It has been a long-winded and public trial — one newspaper announced yesterday that Alred was definitely on his way out — yet Alred, like his fellow specialists, particularly Phil Larder and Joe Lydon, has been forbidden from taking part even privately.

Whether they stay with England will be made public on Thursday, the day after the RFU’s management board meeting. However, these coaches have been given little opportunity to state their case or mount a defence. They have not been interviewed and their contact with Andy Robinson, the England head coach, has been minimal.

Publicly they have been silenced, too; forbidden from talking to the media by the RFU’s communications department. Alred would not talk to The Times and refused to confirm or deny the approach from the All Blacks.

If Alred were to go, his likely replacement would be Jon Callard, the kicking coach at all England representative levels beneath the senior team. However, it is believed that after the exhaustive Club England meetings last week, consensus had it that the newcomers to the England coaching team should be John Wells, former Leicester coach, for the forwards and Brian Ashton, at present at Bath and a proven success at international level.

Alred, it seems, has a better chance of surviving the chop than Lydon, the backs coach, and Larder, the defence coach who was part of the World Cup-winning set-up. Somewhere, people must be asking how coaches such as Larder can be world-beaters one day and no good the next. In New Zealand, they have an answer: Alred is a world-beater and they want him as one of their own.