Ex-All Black: From Pau to Singapore
Former All Black Simon Mannix didn’t contemplate a return to New Zealand when things cut up rough in France.
His time as head coach at French club Pau didn’t end as he would have liked, he quit in April 2019 after a string of poor results, but says he has no regrets.
Mannix, 48, poured all his energy into the role at Pau for five seasons and doesn’t seem bitter at the way things turned out. Rather, he believes he did well to stay in the same job for five years.
‘‘I loved my time in France and so many great years coaching there, and enjoyed it,’’ he says.
‘‘It brought about plenty of its own challenges, but to survive as long as I did over there and I was very happy with the work that I had done.
‘‘Even though I finished prematurely at my last club at Pau, I was still very proud of the work I had done there and rebuilding the club and taking it to where it was.’’
His next move was a surprising one.
Given Mannix had previously worked at Irish club Munster, where he worked as a backs coach under Kiwi Rob Penney in 2012-13, and had been employed as an assistant at French club Racing Metro for five years it was expected his next job would be in Europe.
Instead the former one-test All Black signed a three-year deal with the Singapore Rugby Union as its director of coaching.
And, get this, none of the players in the men’s, women’s (15s and sevens) and under-19 programmes are paid. They train in their spare time, squeezing in their practices and strength and conditioning sessions around their nine-to-five jobs.
It’s as if Mannix, who was on the Hurricanes’ roster in the first season of Super Rugby before heading to England to play for Sale and Gloucester for five years, wanted to step back in time.
The pressure of being in charge of a squad of highly-paid professionals has been replaced by tasks such as setting out cones on training fields and wondering how many people will have to skip training because of work commitments.
‘‘Sometimes you are scratching your head, you are not sure how many players you are going to get. You are hoping to get 30, you might end up with 18 for whatever reason and work will often be one of them.
‘‘They are amateurs, they have to work. So you have all those frustrations that exist around amateur rugby. And they are probably amplified here even more.’’
Mannix travelled through Asia last year, speaking to top coaches in Japan to get their views on the sport in the region before taking on the job in Singapore.
He liked the idea of getting back to the basics of coaching. He’s not been disappointed.
Covid-19 has forced everything in Singapore to grind to a halt, but before the pandemic Mannix enjoyed seeing the gains his players were making.
‘‘I must say I loved seeing the progression of the players here, the men and women. It has been great to watch.
‘‘You might say you are starting at a low point, but any progression is a little win.’’
Mannix continues to admire New Zealand rugby, and how Kiwis approach the game, but says his time in Europe had lifted the blinds from his eyes.
‘‘It’s probably a comment New Zealanders will make once they have travelled for a few years. And they come back, and they see things can be done another way.’’
A former first five-eighth, who made his All Blacks debut in a mid-week match in France just 68 days after his 19th birthday in 1990, Mannix earned his solitary test cap against France in Christchurch almost four years later.
When Steve Hansen announced he was stepping aside as All Blacks coach after the World Cup, there was the usual clamour to guess who might make-up the new coaching staff.
Mannix’s name was among those added to the ubiquitous listicles but he says he didn’t
consider a shift back Down Under.
‘‘The idea of going back to New Zealand, no, it was never one that jumped out to me. And, given as well, how hard was it for a guy like Warren Gatland to get a coaching job?
‘‘With everything he has done, and won, and everything else. You sort of think ‘there is probably not much of a window of opportunity’.
‘‘So we will just keep tracking along with what we are doing.’’
He’s got plenty to do when Singapore gets on top of the pandemic. In the future there are games to be played against Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and Hong Kong, and as part of his brief he’s tasked with mentoring local coaches.
The men’s competition comprises between 700-750 players, spread between nine clubs; a revamp of the structure, paring it back back to a six-team format is part of the plan.
Schoolboy rugby is big in Singapore, Mannix says a lot of money is poured into it and the facilities are excellent, but compulsory national service for two years from the age of 18 is problematic.
A wave of talented players leave school and are lost to the game.
‘‘So there is a huge drop-off. If 20 percent of the people who played first XV rugby at school went on to play after national service or during studies, I would be amazed.
‘‘It is just a major reality of Singapore rugby.’’
The military in Singapore, unlike other countries, no longer have rugby programmes and Mannix hopes they adopt the sport – whether it be 15s, 10s or sevens. Anything to keep athletes in the code.
At Pau, Mannix had little time to be idle; when he wasn’t previewing and reviewing the 32 games a season there was the recruitment side of it, dealing with agents and forming a fresh squad for the next pre-season camp.
Now, in Singapore, he’s dealing with committees and meeting with members of the rugby community outside of their business hours.
‘‘These are things I have never been confronted with in my coaching career. Because it has always been in professional clubs, but when I hark back to when I started playing outside of school in 1990 – training under spotlights and people not able to make it because of work.
‘‘The same kind of constraints are there.’’