Stuart Lancaster can manage, but England's performances in autumn Test series will reveal if he can coach He insists, too, that he wants to be seen in that role for England, that he doesn't want to become a de facto director of rugby, plotting and planning, a figure at one remove from the players and the sharp end of the business, the whistles and shouts and gesticulations, the bit that makes good players even better and decent teams into world-beaters. Good coaches still matter, if only because poor ones can really stuff things up. Did France get to the World Cup final because of, or in spite of, Marc Lièvremont? Exactly. He was bold in having a major clear-out post World Cup. He blooded seven new caps in his first game at Murrayfield and came away with a victory. England won three matches on the road in the 2012 Six Nations, something they had never managed before. They beat World Cup finalists France in Paris and smashed an inept Ireland at Twickenham. The tour to South Africa was lost, 2-0. That's a failure and can't be dressed up as anything else even if the last Test in Port Elizabeth was drawn. And so to the present. So to the crunch. Can Lancaster take England to the next level? That's what this QBE series is about. Not whether England players are nice guys, PR and PC savvy, not whether they are merely a decent enough side in the middle of a rebuild. Funny how the All Blacks never seem to be rebuilding, just winning. Lancaster looked the part at St George's Park last week, overseeing a training session. He believes coaching is more art than science, more gut instinct than stats. He is to be applauded for that. Lancaster has to demonstrate over the next few weeks that he is the real deal as a coach, not just as a manager. He has to show that he has the ability to select shrewdly, that he can put in place smart game plans, that he can read the opposition and, not to put too fine a point on it, that he can get his men to smash the living daylights out of the opposition. That is what a coach does. Over to you, Stuart. To hell with waiting around for the 2015 Rugby World Cup. There is effectively a global showcase on offer in these isles over November. Not only are the big hitters in action - New Zealand and their southern hemisphere chums, Grand Slam Wales and their Six Nations cousins - so too are the likes of Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Russia, Canada and the United States. In tandem with the regular autumn series of Tests, the International Rugby Board has also set up a mini-tournament in North Wales, Parc Eirias in Colwyn Bay hosting the minnows mentioned above. It brings them into the fold, it gives them profile and it aims to ensure that the 2015 tournament proper will be the most competitive ever. Quite rightly the IRB has taken stick for the lopsided World Cup tournament schedule that has been prejudiced against the minnows. This is a great step towards redressing some of those failings. Do World Cup rankings really matter? Much has been made of the need to make the top four ahead of the 2015 draw in London on Dec 3. Those seeds go into different pools. But so what? You've got to beat the best to be the best. France were drawn with the All Blacks last time around, duly lost to them in their group - as well as to Tonga - then beat England and Wales en route to a one-point defeat by New Zealand in the final. No, it doesn't really matter.