Matt O’Connor determined to bring back Tigers glory days
“I’m happy we’ve got enough firepower in our front and second rows and that we’ve got two packs of forwards who can interchange”
Leicester head coach Matt O’Connor tells NEALE HARVEY why the Tigers are ready to reclaim their place at the top table of domestic and European rugby. There’s a saying that you should never go back, so did you have any second thoughts about returning to Tigers for a second spell? No! Once the club decided that Richard Cockerill wasn’t the bloke to take them forward, I had conversations with the people involved and they were very optimistic about the state of the club and the potential to get back to the heights. I was pretty excited about the opportunity. You must look back at your first stint between 2008 and 2013 with a lot of pride? Definitely. It was a fantastic time in our lives and a great five seasons. To be in five Premiership finals and win three of them was incredible. It was a very talented and special group and a lot of those familiar faces are still here, which made it a lot easier to come back. You suffered the ignominy of being sacked by Leinster in 2015. Did that scar you? Not really. Leinster’s a special place and dealing with the national body in close proximity was probably the biggest challenge because of how they wanted to influence things. Unfortunately, you lose your job sometimes and that’s an occupational hazard. There were lots of good times there as well and winning the PRO12 and doing as well as we did in Europe made me a better coach. Expectation is always high at Leicester, is that something you relish? The expectation is only positive because it drives the environment and everyone in it to be as good as they can be. It’s something I’ve had throughout my coaching career, be that with the Brumbies, Leicester or Leinster, so it’s something I’ve grown up with. You had a couple of months to assess Tigers at the end of last season. What did you make of it? I felt there were a lot of positives around the club when I first joined, but the fight in the lads and the character they showed to reach the Premiership semi-final and then almost make the final was really exceptional. The buy-in we had in difficult circumstances was positive and we’ve probably got a better playing squad now, so we have a bit more of a look of the Tigers of old and we certainly have a lot more growth in us. You’ve got a very young coaching team of guys in their thirties around you. Confident they’ll rise to the task? One of the upsides of arriving early last season was it allowed me to look at the group of coaches we had. I’d coached all of them as players and had a good relationship with them, so from Anthony Allen in the academy to Brett Deacon, Boris Stankovich, Richard Blaze and Geordan Murphy with the first team, they were all fantastic players and that ‘Tigerness’ is really important in a place with such traditions. We needed to harness that and it didn’t take me long to realise these were the guys to take us forward. How big a future does Geordan Murphy have in coaching? He did a fantastic job in holding up the environment in difficult circumstances last year and the concrete measure of that was the work he did in winning the Anglo-Welsh Cup. He guided the ship and gave the club a positive vibe. He’s developing as a coach all the time and we know what a great guy he is and what a fantastic player he was, so I’ve got no doubts at all that he will go on to be a fantastic coach at the highest level. You were capped once by Australia, at centre in 1994, featuring alongside David Campese, Michael Lynagh, George Gregan, Matt Burke and John Eales. How did playing at that time help form your coaching philosophy? It was probably the golden generation of Australian rugby and the next guys were fortunate enough to pick up the mantle and win the 1999 World Cup. I learnt so much through that period in my early-to-mid-twenties and developed my philosophy around that generation. Growing up in Canberra, we were the poor cousins to New South Wales and Queensland, but that was a very positive thing because we largely had to work things out for ourselves and playing against world-class guys from Australia and New Zealand at 19, 20 or 21 accelerated my learning. I was fortunate to be in Canberra during a period with a lot of talented players like Gregan, Joe Roff and Marco Caputo and we had to learn on our feet. The success we got was the birth of the Brumbies and after that I spent six years playing and coaching in Japan, which allowed me to develop further. Just how sad does the current parlous state of Aussie rugby make you feel? To see a half-empty stadium for Brumbies v Hurricanes recently was really sad. You had a home quarterfinal against fantastic opposition, with Christian Lealiifano making his comeback from leukaemia, so to have less than 10,000 in was diabolical. The last couple of seasons I was at the Brumbies we averaged 20,000-plus, so it’s a huge dip and what Australian rugby desperately needs is for some strong leadership. The governing body has to stand up, sort out the Super Rugby shambles and give everybody a reason why they should follow rugby and invest their time and emotions in it. Finances aren’t fantastic, results are worse and there needs to be decisive action. The ARU needs to do it quickly because Australian rugby is on a slippery slope. Back to Tigers, are you satisfied with your summer recruitment? It was fantastic to have a couple of months at the end of last season to look at the pros and cons of the group and we’ve been quite active since the end of the season. We’ve tried to put together a squad that gives us the talent and depth to compete on two fronts in the Premiership and Europe and I’m very confident with the squad we’ve got. The challenge is keeping our top 20-25 players fit but if we can do that I’m confident we’ll compete with anybody. Why are you so keen on bringing England wing Jonny May to the club? Since Alesana Tuilagi left in 2012, Leicester have probably lacked a world-class finisher and we’re always in the market for a player of that class. Conversations are ongoing and it’s something the club has been looking at for a couple of years now. What can you tell us on speculation over a move for New Zealand fullback Damian McKenzie? We haven’t had a conversation with McKenzie at this stage – not that we wouldn’t want to! He’s a fantastic footballer but we haven’t spoken about him joining us this year. Are you confident Manu Tuilagi and Matt Toomua will be fit for September 3? Manu’s working
incredibly hard in training with the team and all the indicators are that he will be ready for the start of the season. Toomua’s also been training for a good few weeks now and he looks really, really good, so, fingers crossed, those guys will start the season and if they can stay injury free and get back to the rugby we know they can play, it will be happy days. With George Ford likely to be away for large chunks of the campaign with England, are you potentially a bit thin at fly-half ? I’m actually pretty comfortable with what we’ve got. Joe Ford’s done a great job in pre-season and he was very good in leading Leeds around last year, while Matt Toomua was a kid that I signed as a schoolboy as a No.10, so he’s played a lot of rugby there and his skill-set is transferable across the ten and 12 positions. Ben Youngs missed the Lions tour to be around his brother Tom at a difficult time because of his wife’s illness. Are those two guys okay? They haven’t missed a beat in preseason, to be fair. They’re training the house down and both are really enjoying being in the environment and working hard. They’ve given themselves the opportunity to reset some mental and physical parameters so they can have a really good season. They’re doing really well and are contributing as much as they can. They’re pretty significant leaders for us so to have them around for a full pre-season has been a huge bonus. You’ve got a pretty useful looking backline, but do you have enough forward power to service it? On paper there wouldn’t be a much better backline anywhere in the world, so certainly the challenge is to get them enough ball. But I was incredibly happy with the work of our forwards at the back end of last season; I thought we were very dominant in the exchanges that I was here for and a couple of signings in the back row in Sione Kalamafoni and Dominic Ryan will give us a bit more depth and grunt there. I’m happy we’ve got enough firepower in our front and second rows as well and we’ve probably got two packs of forwards we could interchange without losing too much, so that’s going to be important across the campaign. Are you in the market for more forwards? I think we’re alright and it’s about cracking on with what we’ve got now. What we did at the end of last season will have a massive carry over because there’s a lot of growth in our tight-five. How does the Premiership compare now to the one you left in 2013? The quality of player has certainly increased around the ability to sign marquee guys and I think the EQP qualification has been a fantastic initiative by the RFU and Premiership Rugby. It’s ensured talent is developed and the results of the England U20s in recent years has demonstrated there are world-class players at age group level. England are reaping the rewards of the work the academies have done over the last ten years, so I think the game here is really healthy and moving in the right direction. Crowds are bigger, TV audiences are bigger and the English scene is really positive. Something people in the Southern Hemisphere don’t have an appreciation of is just how healthy the game is in Europe and I’m really excited to be back in what I consider to be the best competition in the world. On Leicester’s academy, would you agree it hasn’t produced as much first team talent as it should have in recent seasons? It’s a tough space with the geographical boundaries that govern it and you don’t always get the young guys you want in the positions you need in the top squad. But we’re working hard on producing the next generation and with guys of the class of Anthony Allen and Brett Deacon involved in our development programmes, you’re giving yourself the best chance. I won’t name names, but we’ve got a couple of very good young No.9s and a couple of young props that we’re very optimistic about and now it’s about giving those guys opportunities. We’ve got some kids who can go on and have massive futures with Leicester and England. As a fellow Aussie, what have you made of the job Eddie Jones has done with England? He’s done a fantastic job. I’ve come across Eddie in many different capacities – he was coaching in Japan when I was there and when he was in charge of the Wallabies I was doing Australia ‘A’ – and there wouldn’t be a better rugby brain around, which he’s demonstrating again. He’s always been a fantastic selector and that’s probably the thing he’s got most right and which hurt the old England regime the most. I would be very optimistic about how England will do moving forward. Are England a genuine threat to New Zealand now? Most definitely. As you saw in the Lions series, it’s all about keeping your top 20-25 guys fit and if England can go to Tokyo in 2019 with their best bodies on the plane, they can beat anyone. You’re 46 now, do you have international coaching ambitions of your own? I was involved with Tonga last November and we had three games in Europe against Spain, USA and Italy. We got the win against Italy which was a great result for the Tongan lads and they’ve gone on to qualify for the World Cup now, which is fantastic. I enjoyed the experience and you always want to aspire to be at the highest level you can be. It’s possibly more about the environment you’re in than who you’re actually coaching, but to be involved at national level in future would be brilliant. First things first, though, because to be given the opportunity to lead Tigers, one of, if not the most successful clubs in the world, is plenty for the minute. As far as targets for this season are concerned, a Tigers run in Europe is surely long overdue? That’s definitely a focus. What we have done in the off-season is work hard with the clear objective of getting back on to the top table in Europe. The only way you can do that is to get out of your group and then cross your fingers and hope you’ve done enough to get a home quarter-final. Beyond that, anything is possible. It’s the same in the Premiership, where it’s all about getting a home semi-final to give you a 75-80 per cent chance of being in the final. Those are our objectives and if you then make the finals, you have a very good chance of winning.