Rugby coaching comes with a health warning. I'm serious. We hear it all the time, most recently from Joe Schmidt and Paul O'Connell. Eddie Jones recovered from the stroke he suffered in 2013, aged 53, while in charge of Japan.
Makes me wonder who'd want to be a coach? From my generation we know with certainty that Leo Cullen and Ronan O'Gara fit the bill.
It takes a certain type of character to make it.
Isa Nacewa didn't recognise the backs coach he encountered at the Auckland Blues in 2005 when Schmidt arrived at Leinster in 2010.
Different animal. Different manner, more confident, with a clear determination to implement a step-by-step plan that would deliver trophies.
Schmidt had discovered his coaching persona. Immediately he put us to work on perfecting our passing.
The great players almost always find their way to the top. It is not just about talent. They possess an iron will to succeed. The very same player is not guaranteed a successful coaching career because a radically different set of skills are required.
There is constant talk about play-makers like Johnny Sexton being an on-pitch coach, but that’s too simplistic a notion to guarantee Johnny’s future as an actual “coach”. There are plenty of men from my playing days who opted out of attempting the transition.
Point of insanity
For starters, there are barely any jobs in Ireland, and the hours are unending to the point of insanity. You can never really switch off.
Not in the top job. Truth be told, it’s not good for your health.
Being able to convey a sharp rugby intellect helps, obviously, but that’s not enough to be successful.
An ex-player must acquire the skills of a politician to become a real coach. First and foremost, you must keep a large group of athletes highly motivated. They have to respect you or fear you or ideally a little of both. Above all else, the owner or people higher up the food chain must believe you can deliver.
Slick communication (or perfecting the art of aloofness) is essential.
And still, it can unravel in the space of a few weeks.
Leo and Rog certainly fit the bill, but they had to develop distinct coaching personas. They had to make enormous changes to their lives – and the lives of their families – while learning some harsh lessons along the way.
And they had to survive failures.
O’Connell is on this journey at the moment. A brilliant on-pitch coach if ever there was one, he is leaving Stade Français this summer, with no plan to join another club next season.
Sounds like some harsh lessons are being learned working under former Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer. I read Paul’s comments last weekend about not having any long-term ambition and how the Paris experience was to figure out if he is willing to become a coach.
Catalyst
Hopefully, this proves the catalyst for him becoming a great coach, like he was a great player.
But there are no guarantees. Even with O’Connell, who, like Brian O’Driscoll and O’Gara, are the Irish trio from my generation that could earn a living through the media and corporate circuit in the UK.
The rest of us do not have this option, not on their scale. I’m fortunate to write a column for The Irish Times and do some broadcast work, but neither comes anywhere near being described as a career path.
I enjoy my link to rugby, but a full-time role in sports media was not to be for me (even if it was possible). I needed to build a new career away from rugby.
Coaching was shelved pretty quickly as I lacked the desire to develop the necessary survival instincts.
If my generation of retired rugby pros had made footballers’ money, would I be happy to live off the interest that accrues from a seven-figure bank balance?
No. I want a reason to leap out of bed every morning. It used to be training up in UCD. That was always going to change. Coaching wouldn’t have been enough, for me, because it seems like you rarely sleep in the first place.
Leo Cullen is at his desk at the crack of dawn five or even six days a week. That’s not including game day and the stress which it brings. He has carved out a reputation as the overseer coach. He runs Leinster.
He is the voice of the club. Of course, he also coaches, continuing his playing role as an expert lineout operator, but he’s added many additional traits.
He had to. His strength of character was an essential base, but so was the alignment of key decision-makers at Leinster when he was prematurely promoted to the head coaching job in 2015 after the board sacked Matt O’Connor mid-summer.
Shield of experience
Graham Henry's visit briefly softened the transition until Stuart Lancaster provided a shield of experience and expertise that allowed their working relationship to prosper.
It will be fascinating to watch Ronan's opportunity with France unfold before our eyes in Japan
Leinster gave Leo a rare gift for any professional coach: they gave him time to grow into the role.
The gig is beyond most ex-players.
The idea about Rog and Paulie heading over to France to gain valuable experience as assistants before returning to Munster, recapturing the Champions Cup for the first time since 2008, may still come to pass.
But, right now, Johann van Graan is the favourite to reach this milestone, especially with Joey Carbery re-signing until 2022.
It will be fascinating to watch Ronan’s opportunity with France unfold before our eyes in Japan.
What made Rog a great rugby player is not what makes him a gainfully employed coach. For one, he chose to specialise as a defensive technician since going straight from being the Munster outhalf to Racing 92 assistant coach in 2013.
I would have seen him as a kicking or maybe attack coach when he retired, but Rog identified a gap in the market. He moulded a new reputation for himself. A new persona.
I've never seen his coaching sessions but players, including Dan Carter, have been impressed enough for the Canterbury Crusaders opportunity to come along – the extremely rare sight of a non-Kiwi imparting wisdom to current and potential All Blacks.
Coaches are not afforded the same flexibility or chances as players
He also toured with Schmidt’s Ireland in 2017. Working with three major teams in three leading rugby nations in six years, alongside an impressive media portfolio, is a seriously impressive achievement.
But it is also what was needed to progress.
Others, like O’Connell and Girvan Dempsey, are facing steeper inclines at present. Girv was part of Leinster’s coaching ticket that won a Champions Cup in Bilbao before taking up the role as Bath attack coach last summer, with the promise of being part of a restructured club with sustained investment from millionaire owner Bruce Craig. Bath and Dempsey’s primary aim, all of a sudden, is to avoid relegation from the Premiership.
Flexibility
Coaches are not afforded the same flexibility or chances as players.
The only guarantee is there is none.
When we strip it back, coaching is all about human contact. Communicate your philosophy and simplify your methods enough for a large group of players to move in the same direction, all the while ensuring the paymasters remain satisfied enough not to interfere.
The politician needs many faces.
There is a reason why Ireland have only lost three test matches in the past two years: it was the environment created by the coach.
(Yes, there is also a reason why they lost to England and Wales in 2019.)
We hear about chaos in France at many Top 14 clubs up to the national side. It’s presumably why a medium-sized club like Castres – who put so much stock in pride of playing for region – can sprint from the peloton to win the Bouclier de Brennus. It’s also why Toulon could flood their squad with foreign talent and effectively buy French titles.
But that’s where most coaching gigs are to be found. It’s where you realise so many weapons that made you a top player are suddenly useless.
Paul O’Connell was the most uncompromising player I played alongside or against. He used to force the opposition into submission with a relentless desire to get on the ball, to meet opponents on the gainline, to outwit great lineout operators like Victor Matfield.
Now, as a coach, he must communicate, teach, compel such actions from others.
You give a teenager clear direction and they hoover up the information, but money complicates this transfer of knowledge. Motivating men – especially in France – who might prioritise wages over success is an enormous challenge. Sometimes it’s impossible.
Multiple ways
Coaching in Ireland is different. Making it at Leinster means the player tends to be one of the best in his position on the island. You do not have to find multiple ways to compel an ageing international foreigner to perform. Everyone involved buys into the “brothers” team ethic, or they are moved along. This makes it far easier to coach.
Problem is only a handful of jobs exist and there are not many second chances if it doesn’t work out.
Most Irish coaches must travel to find work. Rog has embraced this nomadic way
I see Geordan Murphy attempting to revitalise a similar ethos at the Leicester Tigers. That's the proven alternative route to success, rather than flinging money at the wall and hoping it sticks.
But the Irish system requires a near-impossible amount of commitment to pick holes in bigger and usually faster opponents with much larger budgets.
So, most Irish coaches, not unlike the Kiwis and Australians, must travel to find work. Rog has embraced this nomadic way. Girv and others too.
I’ve enormous respect for then, but do not envy their lifestyles.
I'm not ignoring the Champions Cup this weekend, but there has been very little noise about the quarter-finals. It would require a massive implosion by Leinster to be caught by Ulster in Dublin, especially if Iain Henderson joins Will Addison on the injured list. And I can't see Munster coming unstuck against Edinburgh in Murrayfield, even considering the superb job done by Richard Cockerill.
There’s another example of a coach who had to become a politician after being discarded, in a very soccer-esque manner, by Leicester.
Who’d be a coach?
Only the rarest of souls.
My coaching brief in 2019 is with Balbriggan RFC to fulfil the 20x20 campaign pledge to get involved in women’s rugby at grassroots level.
That sentence makes me sound like a politician! I’m not. We will find out in time if Paul O’Connell wants to be. Maybe Rog or even Andy Farrell will add him to their campaigns as a running mate further down the road.
