What happened to the Welsh coaches tipped
THE mind flicks back to a sunny morning in Llandarcy in early 2010 when the then Ospreys elite performance director Andrew Hore was using a whiteboard to run through his vision for the Liberty Stadium region.
When it came to coaches, the name of Sean Holley was conspicuously absent from Hore’s presentation.
“What about Sean? Have you forgotten about him,” came the question.
“No, he’ll be away coaching with Wales,” replied Hore, seemingly without a smidgeon of doubt that would be the case.
The Ospreys would win the league title that year and reach the Heineken Cup quarter-finals, coming unstuck by the odd point in 57 to Biarritz in San Sebastian.
But there was to be no progression to the Wales coaching ranks thereafter for Holley.
He would leave the Ospreys in 2012, subsequently to join Bristol, take them to promotion and then exit stage left yet again. For the past four years he has been working in the media, talking about Wales rather than coaching them.
So many other Welsh team bosses have seen their careers screech off the main coaching roads, to the point where Wales no longer has a single head coach in any of the three main European leagues.
Lyn Jones, winner of two league titles and an EDF Energy Cup during his stint at the Ospreys, is in Russia; ex-Wales coach Nigel Davies hasn’t coached at senior level since departing Gloucester in 2014; Kingsley Jones is heading up the Canada national team; Paul Turner is at Ampthill in the English Championship; Mark Ring, another sharp rugby brain, has been operating as a care worker; Phil Davies is in charge at Yorkshire Carnegie; Geraint John is working for the WRU.
There’s more. Gareth Baber is coaching the Fiji Sevens team, while his pal from Cardiff Blues circa 2012, Justin Burnell – the pair guided the Blues to a Heineken Cup quarterfinal – is head coach at Pontypridd RFC. Darren Edwards, a coach Phil Bennett once described as having big potential, is with Wales sevens, while Jason Strange, who led Wales U20s to a Grand Slam in 2016, was released by the Blues last year and Gruff Rees is overseeing Cardiff Blues’ academy operation.
Tony Clement, like Ring a man with a keen rugby brain, is working for a bank in Swansea, while Lynn Howells went to Romania and coached.
The list could go on.
Does all this matter?
IN a world where it is easy to whistle up a coach from outside the regional scene, does it matter that the man fronting the Cardiff Blues coaching operation hails from Australia rather than Adamsdown and the new Scarlets head coach is from Timaru rather than Trimsaran?
Supporters just want success, after all, and the assumption is not all are bothered where the guy who is delivering it hails from.
A fair analysis?
“It’s one way of looking at it,” says Holley.
“But I think Welsh people have a distinctive way of approaching rugby and I think they potentially have a headstart over imported coaches in the regional game in that they know our culture and so should be able to relate better to young players coming through in these parts.
“In Wales, we have a youth population that’s different from in other parts of the world.
“They have different schooling and grow up in different clubs and in a different culture.
“That’s when a Welsh coach can help those boys coming through, by empathising with them. The Welsh coach will know the kind of animal he’s dealing with and when there are turbulent times for youngsters along the pathway, the local coach may be better placed to understand and help.”
It is worthwhile stressing that pretty much all of Welsh rugby’s lost generation of coaches have had a go in the regional game.
Some performed better than others.
Lyn Jones delivered three pieces of silverware as coach and Holley won a league title as head coach in 2010 but the pair were let go by the Ospreys. Dai Young won two pieces of silverware with Cardiff Blues before leaving for Wasps, while Turner was named Magners League coach of the year in 2010.
Maybe expectations were different back then.
Maybe there were some who felt the regions should have been conquering Europe’s top tier. Certainly, that was the case at the Ospreys and among large sections of their support base.
Whatever, it didn’t happen.
The Scarlets did sparkle for a season or two, but that was under the direction of Wayne Pivac, a New Zealander.
In some eyes, it’s all added up to a perception that, well, outsiders do things better.
Again, Holley doesn’t totally buy it.
“I think if it’s a level playing field and the regions are well-resourced, with the right mix of quality overseas personnel and good homegrown players, there’s no reason why they can’t be competitive under Welsh coaches,” he says.
“Sometimes we can underestimate our own people
“When I joined the Ospreys back in 2003, Lyn Jones opened my eyes to real tactical insights -- genius stuff, almost. He knew the game and saw things others didn’t see.
“But there seems to be truth in the line suggesting you can’t be a prophet in your own land.
“There were other good young coaches at that time, people like Tony Clement, Kevin Hopkins, Kevin George and Rowland Phillips, people who knew the game inside out and were good thinkers.
“I just tried to learn as much as I could.
“At the start of regional rugby, all 10 coaches involved were Welsh. I think there was a reasonable amount of success in the years that followed, but of course you’d always want more.
“We’d all come through the Welsh Rugby Union’s coach development structure, headed by Leighton Morgan.
“I’m not sure what’s happened since.
“I do think that a lot of coaches no longer involved in the Welsh game would like to put something back in.
“When I left the Ospreys in 2012, I remember speaking to Roger Lewis (then WRU chief executive) and Joe Lydon (then WRU head of rugby) and saying: ‘Look, I’m not after a job, but I’ve worked with all these players coming through for the best part of 15 years. Do you want me to help and give something back, perhaps by mentoring? The answer was along the lines of: ‘We haven’t thought of that. We’ll get back to you’. “Nothing happened.
“But I try to stay positive and I think there are some good young Welsh coaches out there – guys like