Rory takes the French route to top in coaching
“At Bordeaux, we are training with even more intensity than we would expect to encounter in a match”
Rory Teague fell in love with rugby from the moment he watched his grandfather Colin playing prop for Gloucester during his childhood. Now 32, he is the brilliant young coach of BordeauxBegles who left a job polishing the skills of Eddie Jones’ England to join the Top 14.
In between, there is the remarkable story of an injury-prone lad who criss-crossed the rugby heartland of France as a young fly-half without ever reaching the heights of which he once dreamed.
For four years, he plied his trade in the colours of Limoges, better known for its fine porcelaine than its players, Tarbes within sight of the Pyrenees, Aurillac, recently bossed by his co-Bordeaux coach Jeremy Davidson, and Grenoble in the shadow of the Alps.
A different Division Two club every season with a patchy appearance record that never hinted at the England career of his cousin ‘Iron Mike’ Teague, the tough blindside flanker for home town Gloucester.
A club for which Rory played only twice at 18 while scoring one of the three tries he touched down in his entire career.
Little wonder that he was somewhat reluctant to talk about his early French connections, given that he is now making a major name for himself off the field.
“I have kind of parked all that stuff in the past,” was his initial reaction. Yet a closer look reveals just what trials he had to surmount far from home to emerge as, arguably, the most gifted backs coach of his generation.
After missing a season or two in England undergoing, among other setbacks, a double hernia operation, he played only one of those four French seasons free of pain with three shoulder operations leaving him on the sidelines for months on each occasion.
“I guess I had a weakness in that area,” he suggests. “First it was one side and then the other. It was just the result of falls, but it also led clubs not to offer me a new contract.”
Rory showed glipses of his true potential when he got to Aurillac, where he scored 41 penalties in just ten games. But leaving them for a Top 14 club provoked an upsetting affair that had finally to be settled in court.
He had signed a three-year contract for the Top 14 team who reneged. Rory, who will not name the club, said: “They thought that, with all my injuries, I was finished as a player.”
As a little-known man in a foreign country, for many, that would have brought the distressing episode to an uncontested conclusion.
But, after signing for Grenoble, Rory launched a legal action that speaks of the determination to succeed that is now driving him on.
He added: “I was not going to take that kind of treatment. I knew I had done nothing wrong and I ended up winning the case.”
Even though his partner Lucie joined him for much of his season with Grenoble, he decided it was time to quit as a player at 27, an age when others are approaching their peak.
He had no particular vocation in mind to furnish a bank account that was not the envy of friends.
“It had got to the point at which realism kicked in,” he said. “I didn’t quite know what to do and thought about trying to get involved in various businesses. Coaching was not something I felt driven to do.”
Not until the moment that totally changed his life at its most important professional crossroads.
If, according to popular legend, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, those of Harrow were responsible for Rory’s own success.
Harrow School’s director of coaching was a friend of his and offered him the rugby role, which brought him into contact with the teenage Maro Itoje.
But his subsequent move to the Saracens academy was all his own work. Rory said: “I knew nobody at the club and just applied on the internet like anyone else. The interview must have gone well. They appointed me to a role in their academy and everything has happened since then.
“I am now totally committed to being the best coach I can be. At Bordeaux, we are training with even more intensity than we would expect to encounter in a match.
“We also want to change the culture here which prevents so many teams from winning their away games. We are in a city where we have lots of fans and want to make them happy.”
Rory left the England set-up because he wanted the daily involvement the Bordeaux job gives him. You feel he is a man in a hurry.
Normal, really, for a guy who, at best, marked time as a player. He would not be the first coach to find stardom and satisfaction in that sphere after a modest start on the field.
Grandfather Colin died a year ago, leaving him with memories of the unfailing support he received. “I owe him so much for my love of this game,” said Rory.