BEN Foden’s father has laid the blame for England’s Rugby World Cup elimination on manager Martin Johnson and his ‘catastrophic’ team selection.

Rob Foden, a former head coach at Chester RUFC, has spent the last six weeks in New Zealand and will be at Eden Park, Auckland, this Sunday to watch the final between the All Blacks and France.

It took Rob several days to get over the disappointment of England’s quarter-final exit, when a second-half try from son Ben was not enough to prevent a 19-12 loss to France.

The RFU is now carrying out an external review into the England set-up but Foden Senior has his own strong views on where it all went wrong for the 2003 world champions.

He said: “I was extremely shocked and disappointed when I read the team selection, mainly because of the naivety of the selection of Johnny (Wilkinson), Toby (Flood) and Manu (Tuilagi). This in effect created two new combinations in the most complex positions for defence on the rugby field. The two tries that we conceded occurred from defensive misalignment.”

Rob said Johnson’s team selection was ‘catastrophic’, adding: “We hadn’t been playing well but why were we not selecting the side that won us the Six Nations with some tweaking?”

Rob, who lives in Cholmondeley, has seen Ben develop from a rookie schoolboy in Chester’s minis team to a fully fledged international and Premiership regular with Northampton Saints.

The highlight of his coaching career came in 2008 when he led Chester to victory in the final of the EDF Energy Intermediate Cup at Twickenham.

England’s World Cup campaign was overshadowed by the off-field conduct of some of the players, which prompted some front-page headlines throughout the tournament.