From today's Times.
Posted for discussion
Leicester Tigers and Bath declines will continue without hired help
owen slot, chief rugby correspondent
When Harry Thacker scored for Bristol Bears, with five minutes to go at Welford Road, and consigned Leicester Tigers to their seemingly weekly dose of crushing indignity, you wondered: what if he had never left? No, I don’t mean Thacker — even though he has scored three tries in two games against his old side and applied all that salt to their copious wounds. No, I mean what if Richard Cockerill had never left?
What if Leicester had stuck by Cockerill a while longer? What if they hadn’t given him the opportunity to rescue Toulon’s season and get them to the 2017 Top 14 final? And then what if he hadn’t got the opportunity to carry on being successful at Edinburgh and got them this season to a first Heineken Cup quarter-final since 2012?
Instead of twisting, what if Leicester had stuck? What if they hadn’t given Aaron Mauger the main job instead of Cockerill? And then Matt O’Connor instead of Mauger, when that didn’t work? And then Geordan Murphy instead of O’Connor, when that didn’t work either?
They are on their fourth regime in three seasons and will have spent Lord knows how much in redundancies. My guess — and it’s not a very brave one — is that if Cockerill had never left, Leicester would be better off and somewhere higher than 11th in the Gallagher Premiership with relegation still a mathematical possibility.
When, though, is it right to sack the coach? It is dead easy to make chin-stroking assumptions about what-ifs and what-might-have-beens with Cockerill and the value of loyalty, yet the fact is that the teams that have risen the farthest up the Premiership this season are those who took the exact same decision as Leicester: to sack and start again.
Third, fourth and fifth in the Premiership are teams that recently changed their head coach or director of rugby. In terms of regime change, Gloucester are a season ahead of Harlequins and Northampton Saints, which may explain why they are safely in third rather scrapping for fourth.
Johan Ackermann has clearly been a success at Gloucester; likewise Chris Boyd at Northampton and so too Paul Gustard at Harlequins. And all three have only just got going. Expect more and better from them next season, especially from Gustard and Boyd who, by and large, inherited a squad for season one and have had a year tinkering with it before they go into season two.
You can no longer, now, watch a Leicester game without your commentators informing you that Leicester are better than this and should be doing better than this and will soon work their way out of the present mess. However, with Gloucester, Saints and Harlequins on an upward trajectory, it is actually more likely that these three will pull away even more next season and leave Leicester even farther in their wake.
Last season, when there was an unusually high turnover of Premiership directors of rugby and head coaches, rugby traditionalists squealed that this new rugby culture was horrid and far too much like football. This season, that turnover doesn’t look such a bad thing after all.
Traditionally, rugby — indeed, most sports — agree that loyalty and continuity are to be prized. This season the evidence does not bear that out. Here is the problem that Leicester — and, indeed, Bath — face. At one time, these were the two giants of the English club game. In their different ways, though, they have both spent too many seasons testing and rejecting too many different coaching and management groups. Leicester have twisted and burned so many times that it is the board itself which looks culpable. Bath’s turnover has been slower, yet barely more effective.
Yet just when Gloucester, Saints and Harlequins have proven the benefits of regime change, Bath and Leicester are both looking at a more traditional option: continuity, loyalty, promoting from within, all the stuff they forgot with Cockerill.
Murphy is 41 and has been appointed head coach of the Tigers; Stuart Hooper is only 37 and is to be next season’s director of rugby at Bath. Both are comparatively fresh to the world of coaching and management; Murphy stopped playing six years ago, Hooper only three.
Their clubs have identified them as the smart, new leaders of the new age, an assessment based on their years together, their understanding of these personalities and the way they interact around their clubs. Yet, however much you admire the faith being placed in them, the fact remains that both clubs are making an educated gamble because Murphy and Hooper are being promoted into jobs that they have not done before.
Murphy has now been in this job for the best part of a season and no one can pretend that it is working. Success may yet lie ahead for Murphy and Hooper in these roles, though surely only if the right support and infrastructure is put in place around them. Murphy needs another senior coach alongside him. Tigers were hoping that would be Shaun Edwards, it may now be Mike Ford. It is vital that they get it right.
It would appear even less likely that Bath will. After Todd Blackadder announced his departure two weeks ago, Bath confirmed that Hooper was to be promoted to fill his shoes a year earlier than expected. That is one thing, it is quite another that he appears set to take over without anyone in the role of head coach.
Bath have not renewed the contracts of Toby Booth and Darren Edwards, two of their coaches for next season. Neal Hatley, the England scrum coach, is set to join the coaching staff but not until after the World Cup in November. What the coaching team desperately lacks is a senior experienced figure to lead it. The club insist that they will be fine without one. We shall see. Leicester and Bath have become serial underperformers; they are both desperately trying to stick a heel in to stop the slide but they could also slide even farther. They have placed commendable faith in their young leaders; they now need to make appointments around them too. That is the management lesson of this season.
Breezy Worcester proved me wrong
Wrong, wrong and wrong again. At the start of this season, I was convinced that Worcester Warriors would be relegated, halfway through I felt the same and even five weeks ago, I hadn’t changed my mind.
I should have paid attention to the money. Newcastle Falcons reduced their wage bill this season by nearly £1 million; their total spend on players was the lowest in the league, considerably lower than Worcester’s. After their success in finishing fourth last year, it seems Newcastle thought they could make cuts and not get found out.
I still don’t want to pay too much attention to the money, though, because it is not as if Worcester have bought their way out of trouble. In their past four games, their three wins were breezy, confident displays; they looked nothing like a team trying to dig their way out of trouble.
Their next challenge is to do it again. They are such victims of their own success that Josh Adams, Bryce Heem and Jack Singleton are on the way out this summer, all rough diamonds polished at Sixways and now cherry-picked by other ambitious clubs. Warriors have not gone out shopping for players of similar reputation; they will go back to the mine and look for the talent again.