Why have Welsh coaches fallen out of fashion for top jobs?
There seems a southern hemisphere monopoly of senior positions, writes Daniel Schofield
It is little exaggeration to say Wales invented the concept of rugby coaching. Ray Williams became the sport’s first national coaching adviser in 1967 for the Welsh Rugby Union after the Rugby Football Union had turned down his proposal to set up a system of coaching courses in England.
By the mid-1970s, Wales had more than 300 qualified coaches, which coincided with the national team’s golden period. Carwyn James, Clive Rowlands and John Dawes emerged as some of the finest thinkers on the game. Such was their success that New Zealand coaches would come to Wales in search of their secrets.
How times change. Since Graham Henry was appointed in 1998, Kiwis have held the post of Wales head coach for 19 of the past 22 years. That tradition continued when Wayne Pivac replaced Warren Gatland, with WRU chief executive Martyn Phillips saying that no Welsh coaches were qualified for the role.
Far more alarmingly, since Dai Young lost his position as Wasps director rugby last month, not a single Welsh coach holds a top job across the Pro14 or Premiership. The Welsh regions are led by an Englishman (Dean Ryan at the Dragons), an Australian (John Mulvihill at Cardiff Blues), a Scot (Carl Hogg at Ospreys) and a New Zealander (Brad Mooar at the Scarlets). Next season, Glenn Delaney (a Kiwi) and Toby Booth (an Englishman) will take over at the Scarlets and Ospreys respectively. The last time a Welsh coach was appointed to a permanent position at a region was when Kingsley Jones got the Dragons job in 2014.
None of this is to denigrate the achievements of any foreign coach who has coached in Wales. After all, Gatland returned to New Zealand last year as Wales’s most successful head coach, with four Six Nations titles, including three Grand Slams, and two World Cup semi-finals. Few would dispute Pivac’s credentials, having guided Scarlets to a Pro14 title and runners-up.
Yet for Lynn Howells, who was briefly Wales caretaker in a 30-year coaching career, there seems to be an ingrained bias toward foreign and particularly southern hemisphere coaches.
“I think it is very easy to pick up coaches with a different accent,” Howells said. “There are some very, very good Welsh coaches and no one gives them the opportunity. It is certainly not because of their coaching ability, because they are quality coaches.
It is more a case of not appreciating what you have got right under your noses.”
At the last World Cup, three teams were led by Welsh coaches: Russia (Lyn Jones), Canada (Kingsley Jones) and Namibia (Phil Davies). In the English Championship, Bedford Blues’ Mike Rayer is probably the most consistently overachieving coach in the past decade while, in the Welsh Premiership, Cardiff coach Steve Law has plenty of admirers. Ulster assistant coach Dwayne Peel, Worcester-bound Jonathan Thomas and Leigh Jones, who worked under Eddie Jones with Japan, are all highly rated.
So when will one land a head coach position? One could draw the parallel with English football managers struggling to get the top jobs in the Premier League because they lack big-club experience, which is impossible to get unless a team take a punt.
Yet the challenge is as much keeping talent within the system as promoting it. In 2007, soon after Gareth Jenkins had been fired as Wales head coach following a disappointing World Cup, the four regional coaches – Lyn Jones, Dai Young, Paul Turner and Phil Davies – called a meeting with the WRU chief executive Roger Lewis. Given Jenkins’s unceremonious departure, they sought assurances about what pathway there was for them to progress or stay within the game. No answer was forthcoming and within a couple of years all had left their positions, taking all their experience (or, as Kiwis term it, intellectual property) with them.
Clive Griffiths has also had a coaching career spanning three decades and is currently director of rugby at Doncaster. His feelings chime with Howells, that Welsh coaches are no longer considered in vogue.
“I do feel that we look down on ourselves and that we feel the grass is always greener on the other side,” Griffiths said. “There are plenty of coaches in Wales who are quite capable of taking these jobs, but unfortunately their faces are not fashionable. I don’t really know how you test it. How do you compare Wayne Pivac with Dai Young? Someone like Mike Rayer, who continually overachieves with Bedford, but never seems to get a look-in. Are they really that far behind? It seems very sad.”