Coaches worth their weight in gold

[fleabane]

Article in today’s Guardian:


Kidney and Boyd show coaches are worth weight in gold in Premiership

The salary cap and CVC cash have turned the league on its head, putting an emphasis on who gets most out of players

When Bristol took on London Irish at Ashton Gate on Sunday, it was the first time the two clubs had met in the Premiership for 10 years. One or other had been in the Championship in that time, mainly the Bears, and the presence of the two most recently promoted clubs in the top half of the Premiership is an indication of how the salary cap is working.

The top four clubs have all had stints in the Championship in the past 12 years while the bottom four have always been in the Premiership: Saracens are bottom because they lost 35 points for breaching the league’s salary cap regulations, but Leicester, Wasps and Bath, former European Cup winners all, have mustered four victories in 15 matches in the tournament this season, although between them they supplied 12 players for England’s World Cup.

Leicester had them all back at Northampton last weekend and it did not seem to make a jot of difference as they suffered a fourth Premiership defeat, none of which yielded a bonus point. The result took the Saints to the top of the table where they stayed after Bristol drew with opponents who played the second half with 14 men.

London Irish and Worcester were expected to contest the drop this season, but after five rounds both are in the top half of the table. The deal with CVC has given clubs whose average attendances are considerably lower than the likes of Leicester the means to spend up to the salary cap and Irish were unrecognisable from their last Premiership campaign two years ago when they lost 14 matches in a row on their way to an immediate return to the second tier.

With the salary cap acting as a counterweight to the financial muscle of some and the weakness of others, coaching helps make a difference. The Exiles have the former Ireland coach Declan Kidney in charge, backed up by Les Kiss, and their experience showed at Bristol where Irish in the first half only played in opposition territory and trusted their defensive line but in the second, with the prop Ollie Hoskins having been sent off, kept the ball in hand to minimise the impact of the missing brick in their wall. Pat Lam has done remarkably well at Bristol, but Kidney came out on top on Sunday with a coaching masterclass.

The World Cup showed the difference high-calibre coaches make. Premier League football is going through one of its more frequently recurring phases where a few matches without a victory means questions are asked about a manager’s future, never mind that the riches enjoyed by that league mean that even the smallest club have the means to assemble a talented, competitive squad.

An unsuccessful streak is seen as evidence that the players at that club are not good enough, but as Carwyn James observed before taking the 1971 Lions to New Zealand, where they were expected to come a distant second to the All Blacks, the successful coach makes his players believe they are better than they are. The reverse tends to be true at struggling sides.

Leicester, after staring relegation in the face last season, should be wondering why they, and not Northampton, did not make a move for Chris Boyd, who coached the Hurricanes to the 2016 Super Rugby title. The New Zealander arrived in England just before the start of last season at the club that had been, in playing terms, the Premiership’s most conservative and risk-averse.

Seeking contact rather than space had brought them success earlier in the decade, but that had long faded and they were muddling along in the bottom half before approaching a coach who encouraged players to look for space and play with their heads up. It took a while for players to acclimatise to the winds of change and when the Saints were beaten by Leicester at Twickenham 14 months ago, it was their 16th defeat in 22 Premiership matches: relegation form.

They have won seven of their last nine and, if Boyd himself says there is still a way to go, and Saturday’s Champions Cup match at home to Leinster should reveal how far, they are far removed from the highly structured automatons that he inherited. Bath are another who should take note, a club not short on ability that play by numbers on a bog of a pitch.

Unless Irish or Worcester collapse, a giant will go down. If the table reads the same with five rounds to go as it does now, they will be twitching in boardrooms. If it is hard to see anyone advocating ring-fencing to prevent Saracens from dropping into the Championship, although clubs who told Saracens to accept their punishment and not appeal should now take their own advice and regard that matter as closed while Premiership Rugby polices this season’s cap, but Leicester, and their army of fans, going down would be another matter. The cost would be felt by everyone.

Do Leicester, a club whose slow, steady decline became precipitous because problems were not addressed, deserve saving? This could be the most enthralling, ghoulish relegation battle yet, an attraction the Pro14 lacks. In France, Stade Français are bottom of the pile in the Top 14, the grandees laid low, and with the recent investment into the game something could be done about bolstering the Championship to better prepare teams for promotion.

Bristol could have gone back to the top of the table on Sunday on points difference from Northampton. Lam still has work to do, but he was an inspired appointment. What separates the top from the bottom (taking out Saracens) is coaching:

the right appointment provides a better return than any marquee player.

[JGT57]

Just about sums the job up.

[chewbacca]

Makes the chances of improvement look a bit bleak.

[fleabane]

Chewbacca, I agrée.

What it does is spell out in stark terms the barrier to progress that Tigers face, a barrier that some on this board, as well as the BoD seem unprepared to admit exists.

The point about the equalising of purchasing power as a result of the CVC injection, and therefore fous on coaches as much as on players is well made.

Let’s hope something is happening behind the scenes to address the dire situation that Tigers are in, and let’s also hope that the BoD open up and tell us if they have any plans for the future.

[chewbacca]

Im hoping the BoD have a plan and are just waiting for Steve Hansen to get back off holiday.

[ABClub]

Clubs investing big money on aspects outside the cap is interesting. Wasps have fallen foul of having abysmal training facilities in recent years. Realistically Tigers could improve significantly in that area as well.

If Vesty hasn't already been taken by England then he'd be a prime example of a coach where a big wage would return much more on the investment than most marquee players do. The Saints attack under Vesty is brilliant.

Head coach/forwards coach - Steve Borthwick
Backs coach - Sam Vesty
Defence coach - Joe Worsley
Scrum coach - Boris

That would be light years ahead of the current set-up.

[fleabane]

Looks good to me, ABC Club!

[ABClub]

Looks good to me, ABC Club!

Sadly it's just hypothetical.

Rumours are that Vesty is lined up to take over from Wisemantel as attack coach for England. Sounds like Jones wants him to join in the summer after seeing out the season with Saints.

If there were two coaches going that I'd like to see the club invest a lot of money in getting it would be Borthwick and Vesty though. Borthwick is possibly the most respected line-out coach in the world and gets his forwards working to good structures ball in hand. Vesty meanwhile has coached Saints to play brilliant heads up rugby. Our dire line-out, lack of attacking shape and poor execution in attack are three of the biggest issues currently.

[chewbacca]

Clubs investing big money on aspects outside the cap is interesting. Wasps have fallen foul of having abysmal training facilities in recent years. Realistically Tigers could improve significantly in that area as well.

If Vesty hasn't already been taken by England then he'd be a prime example of a coach where a big wage would return much more on the investment than most marquee players do. The Saints attack under Vesty is brilliant.

Head coach/forwards coach - Steve Borthwick
Backs coach - Sam Vesty
Defence coach - Joe Worsley
Scrum coach - Boris

That would be light years ahead of the current set-up.

Got my pen out and writing to Santa now !

[JP14]

[kk20gb30]

The article is a great summation .Thing is ,good or bad ,coaches have to be appointed.A sporting institutions success or failure therefore does not solely depend on the person overseeing the playing side.The vision behind the scenes , away from the field of play is just as important, if not more so.

[Leicestertinytiger]

This is even more true when it comes to rugby premiership clubs. With the CVC investment, higher TV revenues and more interest in the game, most clubs are paying up to the salary cap and will have similar ability squads.

Therefore, the points of difference are going to be areas which aren’t capped and you can invest more money than the competition. The main area for this is going to be the quality of your coaching team. Secondary would be training facilities.

If we want to return to being the best team in England, that involves having the best coaching set up. Yet over the past few seasons we’ve had one of the worst.

[FrontRowUnionMember]

So who are the coaches coming out of jobs that are not lines up elsewhere?
Scott Wisemantel, or is he going to Australia staff?
Steve Borthwick, fingers crossed.
Micheal Cheika?
Joe Schmidt, or is he going to NZ staff?
Steve Hansen?
Ian Foster, if Robertson gets the AB job?
Milton Haig has a decent reputation.
Ben Ryan?

We‘re seeing the difference a very experienced or highly inventive coach can make, versus what we currently have.
Man for man, I don’t believe our squad is any weaker than most of the other teams in the league, but the results don’t seem to be coming, and the on field performances show little signs of hope for improvement.

[CitizenSmiff]

Ben Ryan?

We‘re seeing the difference a very experienced or highly inventive coach can make, versus what we currently have.

I love the idea of Ryan as a head coach, feel like he could bring something new and exciting not just to the club but to the premiership. Too experimental for our board though, bet he doesn't even own a blazer. And he seem to have his own hustle going at the moment with yet another novel form of indoor rugby.

[JP14]

I would love Ben Ryan, Haig is not too impractical to approach, Schmidt won’t be recruited by the All Blacks plus I’m not a fan of his coaching style anyway, for all the hype it was only successful for less than year if that.

Big Jim and Goody say we should get Johnno back, he’s been out of the game a long time but he won’t take no player cartel and could give the players a boost and a deserved kick up the derrière needed.