Ryan stamps his authority with new pathway
RFU development chief tells Charlie Morgan of his definitive vision for the country’s future
Dean Ryan’s remit as the Rugby Football Union’s head of international player development includes two substantial and topical goals; to aid the progression of elite youngsters and to ensure that more English directors of rugby emerge. He is determined to use the Premiership to achieve both objectives and, evidently, is not afraid to make divisive calls.
In June, just shy of two years after arriving at the RFU from Worcester, Ryan made a decision that shook up English rugby. By relieving John Fletcher and Peter Walton of their roles, the 52-yearold cut ties with two intuitive, personable and immensely popular age-group coaches.
Various proteges, some part of Eddie Jones’s squad, voiced surprise and disappointment. The following day, Harlequins wing Gabriel Ibitoye scored two tries in a 35-10 win over Scotland at the World Under-20 Championship and dedicated the team’s performance to the pair. Owen Farrell, the senior team’s current co-captain, is just one of many players that the pair guided through the England Under-18 set-up to the top level over the past decade.
Ryan does not hide from the gravity of this move, part of a gradual revamp he has overseen since reuniting with former Gloucester ally Nigel Melville, now the RFU’S director of professional rugby. He says Fletcher and Walton have altered how club academies operate and that England’s junior teams will benefit for years to come.
“Their legacy would be the work that is done between the ages of 16 and 18,” Ryan explains. “[They] changed the way the game is played at that level. I’m by no means trying to diminish that – it is a legacy, and I don’t think many people leave legacies in rugby.”
Although he saw no deficiencies in the players produced, Ryan believed the under-18 and under-20 programmes “were starting to stray apart and conflict with each other”. He acted accordingly.
“I wanted to do it in reverse,” he adds. “I wanted to bring people who were experienced in the challenge of the future into development and into the challenge of coaching a different way. The previous group was well connected to the development game, with a huge amount of support in schools, but not connected upwards – [without] as much traction or as many relationships in the senior game.”
Jim Mallinder was approached and recruited by Ryan. Available following his sacking by Northampton Saints last December, Mallinder joined another RFU returnee in Steve Bates – the former Newcastle Falcons head coach who started as performance manager in March 2017.
“We’ve now got three directors of rugby with 30 years’ experience of the game from the moment it went professional up until last year,” says Ryan.
“That’s a considerable amount of intellectual property and something I wanted two years ago.
“There was a gap in some of the experience that worked in the pathways and I don’t hide my delight in being able to attract someone as current as Jim, who could go and work anywhere.”
Ryan is acutely aware of the Premiership’s innate limitations yet remains eager to draw upon it. He was instrumental in striking a deal in which club coaches are sent on secondments to the England Under-20 squad. The first trio to join England Under-18s in a similar capacity was announced last week, comprising Sean Marsden from Bristol, Jonathan Fisher from London Irish and Darlington Mowden Park’s Mark Luffman. Mallinder and Bates, sitting across both major age-group sides, will coordinate matters. The idea is that coaches offer fresh ideas and further themselves, too.
“We created a generation of people who were working in the Premiership without support and that world is quite cut-throat,” Ryan says. “We were ending up with overseas [coaches] being seen as the new and therefore the more successful.
“We never really developed a cohort behind Dean Richards, Steve Diamond, Jim Mallinder. We had young guys being turned over. Paul Gustard is probably the first to make that transition.
“If you are an owner or a director of rugby at a Premiership club, you are still signing that 40-cap international who is coming up to retirement and speaks well in the changing room – because you are dealing with the here and now. That is our elite coaching. We needed to change the way we offered support and that’s my area. Primarily, we’ve got to create more English directors of rugby. We’ve got to create more longevity in a tournament that doesn’t offer longevity.
“It’s almost like saying that a Premiership coach can’t come and run an adaptive game. Really? Do we really think that? There are some smart Premiership coaches. You might not see that often because the requirements of that environment are very short-term.”