Ex-sarries chief to help club’s review
Bath Rugby have brought in former Saracens chief executive Ed Griffiths as a consultant on a short-term contract to help the club review what is going wrong at The Rec.
Bath are winless and bottom of the Gallagher Premiership table after six rounds of league action and the club have confirmed they will be doing a thorough review of how they operate during November when the league takes a twoweek break while the Premiership Rugby Cup is played during the Autumn internationals.
Griffiths was Saracens chief executive between 2008-2015, during which time the team reached the Premiership final four times and won two titles.
Earlier in his career, he was chief executive of the Springboks team when they won the 1995 World Cup.
In an open letter to fans Bath chief executive, Tarquin Macdonald said: “We want a system which is delivering winning performances, and which supports our ambition to compete consistently for Premiership and European honours.
“In order to make the most of this review period, to challenge ourselves and maximise our learning, we are bringing in some external perspective.
“Ed Griffiths is consulting to us in a short-term advisory role.
“Ed has previously held senior roles as Chief Executive at Saracens and the South African Rugby Union, and over thirty years he has held a number of senior roles and consulted to professional sports organisations in rugby and other sports.
“Importantly he has been fundamental in building winning systems.
“Ed will work with me, Stuart [Hooper, director of rugby], our coaches and Performance department Heads to provide perspective on what we are doing, how we work, what is working well and what we can focus on improving.”
Providing details of the process the club will take, Mcdonald said: “Each week we review the immediate-term reasons for our results in the context of both the game and training week, and the game block.
“As standard, at the end of each block of games we review what we do in greater depth. In the context of our current standing, our review process must look different.
“After Round 8 of the Premiership [when Bath play league leaders Leicester Tigers away] we have two weeks of Premiership Cup rugby, including one bye week without a game, before the Premiership recommences with Round 9 [at home to Exeter Chiefs] at the end of November. We will use this pause in the Premiership to analyse what we do and scrutinise each component part.
“We will examine the key areas of our game, our training and preparation to identify how we can deliver a consistent platform, whilst also continuing to create scoring opportunities and converting them.
“We will appraise each part of what we do including player availability, and we will work with world-leading external experts where appropriate such as Sports Surgery Clinic - based in Dublin to assess if there is anything further we can do to mitigate the risk of ACL injuries which have such a catastrophic impact on players and the squad.
“At the same time it is important that we stand back and assess how all of these component parts fit together. The aggregation of these parts is our ‘system’ - what we do, how we do it, and how we bring it all together.”
Bath have lost internationals Cam Redpath, Joe Cokanasiga, Anthony Watson and Beno Obano to serious knee injuries in the last six months.