Clive Woodward has confirmed that he is to continue as coach of the England side despite their diapointing Worrld Cup campaign.
The coach revealed at a press conference at Twickenham on Tuesday that he will see out the remaining nine months of his contract, and has been backed by Fran Cotton, chairman of the Club England committee.
England endured their worst World Cup campaign for 12 years, bowing out at the quarter-final stage against South Africa last month after losing to New Zealand a fortnight earlier.
Woodward faced the media for the first time since the tournament and in bullish mood stated: "I have no intention of resigning. I have told the RFU that I fully intend honouring my contract, which runs out next August."
"It is up to other people to judge me, but I am sure that these fellows (the RFU) wouldn't keep me employed if I didn't have value."
Cotton added: "Clive has the total confidence of his players, which has not always been the case in the past, and has a vision of how he wants to play the game which the only way England can put themselves in a position to beat the big southern hemisphere countries."
Woodward admitted he is still struggling to come to terms with England's World Cup failure.
"I genuinely believed that we had a genuine chance of winning the World Cup, and we arrived at the tournament with a lot of optimism,'' he said.
"For the last two years, everything had been geared towards the World Cup, making sure that we arrived with a powerful and fit team. When we played America during one of the World Cup warm up games, it was a performance based on power and wit, and the players played with their heads up - it was fantastic."
"At that stage, I started to get excited that we could do something special in the World Cup. We placed a massive importance on the New Zealand game in our group - it was the whole key to our World Cup - but while we played with a massive amount of passion and power, and had 60% of the ball, we didn't play as well as we had done against Italy and during those warm-up games. "
"Then when I saw what France did to New Zealand, it nearly sent me over the top," the coach concluded