Clear from beginning Lee was a cut above say Titans
LEE BLACKETT’s success as a Premiership head coach comes as no surprise to one of the men who gave him his first gig.
Since taking over from Dai Young, Blackett has steered Wasps from 10th in the table into the final with yesterday’s semi-final victory over Bristol their 12th win in 13 games.
The former Leeds centre, 37, is already seven years into his coaching career having been given his first chance by Rotherham coowners, Martin Jenkinson and Nick Cragg aged 30.
Blackett got his first step on the coaching ladder by chance after Andre Bester’s fall-out with the Titans management and he took the unfancied side to backto-back Championship semi-finals in his two full seasons as the head coach.
Jenkinson is thrilled he is now proving himself at the top level. “It is a great satisfaction to see how Lee has gone on to do so well,” Jenkinson said.
“Bester left us and there was a tail-end of a season to finish. We were lucky because we got Alex Codling and Lee Blackett, who was still a player at the time, for the last six to eight games. They were probably the best coaches we’ve ever had – and I’ve been at Rotherham 42 seasons!
“We interviewed all kinds of people, including a former All Black, but Nick and I both agreed we weren’t talking to anyone any better than what we’d already got. Lee was 30 but it was clear from the off, he was a cut above.”
Under Blackett, Titans defied all expectations and pushed Bristol all the way in both semi-finals (2014 and 2015), despite working with two very different squads from year to year.
Jenkinson says: “Most of our players got picked off in the summer of 2014 and we had a very different backline the following season. We got a drubbing by Worcester early on and I said to Lee, ‘you are playing last year’s game plan with this year’s squad’. He said, ‘I know, it changes now’. We made the play-offs again.”
Jenkinson is backing Blackett to make it all the way to the top. “Lee has all the components,” he said. “He is technically very able, massively driven and works hard. Although he has the personality to have a laugh, he also has a ruthless edge. If someone needs dropping, he drops them; if someone needs telling, he tells them.”