Player power puts pressure on players!
By all accounts, player power had much to do with the departure of Richard Cockerill from Edinburgh. Mind you it’s an ill wind that blows no good and it’s difficult to think of a better man to have involved with Eddie Jones’ cosmopolitan set up. A yeoman Englishman bringing a welcome dose of English passion to proceedings..
Instinctively I want to rail against player power. Coaches need to be in total control, and it is they above all others who stand and fall by the results. It’s coaches, not underperforming players, who get fired midseason. It’s coaches who are held accountable by the board and fans, even when it’s often the ineptitude of their charges, random moments of player madness or just plain bad luck that shapes the results of games and seasons.
Player power can also be full of cliques and divisive. It’s ok if you are part of that elite usurping power that wants change and to put its imprint on the side, but it’s tough cookie if you are not part of the inner circle. Factions can form very quickly. They inevitably view everything through their own self-interested prism, they will rarely see the big picture.
But, reviewing a few recent instances of player power, I must concede they can work in the short term, power grabs can take a team forward if for no other reason than those instigating the revolution must deliver. They have upset the applecart, belittled the coach who had been in situ, and the onus is on them to redouble their efforts and make it work. And prove they were right.
It’s an interesting dynamic, nonetheless. When a side is deficient as a group and have one or more glaring weaknesses to work on it must be bloody hard on the bloke brought in to remedy the situation.
I am thinking of Paul Gustard here who tried manfully to get Quins to up their intensity, hang tough for longer in games, hit harder and more often in the tackle. Show a bit more ticker and grunt if we are being brutal. Cockerill’s task was pretty much identical at Edinburgh.
That almost guarantees a coach’s unpopularity unless the results instantly improve and silverware results, which is the exception. Talented professional rugby players, over a period of time, won’t enjoy having their mistakes and inadequacies highlighted on an almost daily basis. The coach becomes their tormentor.
With Quins – and it would seem Edinburgh – there came a tipping point and a parting of the ways but what intrigues me with Quins is that some of Gustard’s die-hard approach lingered.
Not in Quins style of rugby; on his departure they immediately reverted to the all-singing, all-dancing rugby that had seemed so flawed in the seasons immediately prior to Gustard’s appointment.
But Gustard can take some credit for a mental hardness that finally kicked in and saw them win high-scoring encounters they might have lost by 30 points in previous games.
The ferocity of their tackling was also markedly up than anything seen since their Premiership-winning year of 2012 and again the hangover from Gustard’s approach might have had a role there.
If I am right in any of this, Edinburgh could surprise quite a few people this season. Many of the same elements – and the need for the players to put up or shut up – will come into play.
One of the other modern day player revolts I witnessed firsthand was France at RWC2011 when midway through the tournament the senior players stopped talking to coach Marc Lievremont.
Now, full disclosure, I quite liked Lievremont, the last coach lest we forget to guide France to a Grand Slam (2010) and I would argue it is just possible Leivremont was doing something right, some of the time.
He was a hard taskmaster. and gloried in ringing the changes. A bevvy of big name players suddenly found their automatic places in the side were up for grabs which didn’t much please them. The harder Lievremont worked them the more truculent and reluctant they became, which culminated in Les Bleues losing two pool games at RWC2011 and scraping into the quarter-finals by the skin of their teeth.
At which point they were done with Lievremont although, with an irony that seemed to entirely escape them at the time, it was a Lievrement doggedness and determination – dismissed as boring by most – that then saw them beat England and Wales before being robbed of a World Cup by any number of ludicrous refereeing decisions in the final against New Zealand at Eden Park.
Player power is not a new concept and comes in various guises and degrees. It is often cited as the reason England improved dramatically during RWC2007, eventually reaching the final after a dismal opening round win over the USA and a thumping 36-0 defeat against South Africa. Possibly or did some big names – and others – simply pull their fingers out and start playing to their true ability, at a level Brian Ashton had a right to expect from the off ?
Then there was the tale of England’s senior players telling Clive Woodward, above, they had been overdoing the training after a sluggish 2003 quarter-final and they wanted to dial it down. Is that player power or simply good collaboration and mutual respect.