CHRIS HEWETT
GUEST COLUMNIST

The art of forgetting is as fundamental to rugby as the immeasurably finer art of goal-kicking in the teeth of a gale-force wind. A classic example: the people running the international game spent more years than was good them – or for the sport – struggling to remember that the Springboks were pariahs under the terms of the Gleneagles Agreement and should not be touched with a bargepole.
And here’s another: a brigade of Twickenham blazers bombed Brian Ashton out of his job as England coach in 2008 after conveniently failing to recall that he had led an under...