Succession plan about more than results – and had to be...

If it was all about results on the field, Todd Blackadder probably wouldn’t have been offered a new contract at Bath Rugby this early. Fifth and sixth-place Premiership finishes and an Anglo-welsh Cup final defeat are hardly the return owner Bruce Craig would have envisaged when he offered Blackadder a three-year deal as director of rugby. Here we are in September and Todd has already signed an extension, will be in charge until 2020 and possibly 2021. Bath are looking long-term, not quick-fix. They want stability. They want certainty. They want to promote from within – players and coaches. That’s what the best teams in the land – Exeter and Saracens – are doing. The champions of yesteryear, Leicester, used to do the same with such great effect. If done right, succession brings success. It can also be the most cost-effective way to win things, if done correctly. Stuart Hooper – the club’s second longest-serving captain of all time – is the man Bath are investing in big time, with Todd as his mentor. While some fans have already convicted and sentenced him, I’ll reserve judgment on Hoops as a director of rugby, or “head of the rugby department” as he may well be known, until he’s actually done the job for a decent amount of time. We’re talking two years, maybe even three, until he takes over. By that time he would have been retired and working within the club off the field for four or five years. From what I’ve read on social media, fears as to whether he is the right candidate appear to fall into two main categories. 1. He doesn’t have enough coaching experience or qualification. 2. It’s too soon. Bath don’t want him to coach. They want him to be the overseeing, strategic brain, the man with the club at heart bringing all the component together to make the club a success, taking the leadership he showed on the field to a global level. It’s not easy, but there are examples of players successfully going straight into the top job after retiring. Dean Richards won the Premiership four years in a row after taking over from Bob Dwyer at Tigers in the late 90s . Granted, it helps when you are inheriting a team of such calibre, but he remains a DOR who leaves the day-to-day training to others. If you have effective coaches, you can step back and look at the bigger rugby pictures. It will be interesting to see who replaces Toby Booth as forwards coach, given the future make-up of the coaching team was spelled out by CEO Tarquin Mcdonald. It needs to be someone of experience, who can complement the evolving attacking strategy of Girvan Dempsey. Stability is the most important aspect of Bath’s long-term vision. If we go back to the summer of 2016, the club was in a mess. Mike Ford, who had lost the faith and trust of the majority of the squad, had been sacked.

Bath are looking long-term, not quick-fix...

Key players had left and not been replaced. Bath had finished ninth and were not in the Champions Cup. They had no director of rugby until August. They had the smallest squad in the Premiership and were woefully short in some positions. Blackadder’s appointment was as much to do with the cultural improvements the management wanted him to make as the results he’d had at Crusaders. Two Super Rugby runners-up spots were not a great return for a team stacked with All Blacks who were, and are, the most successful team in the competition’s history. Blackadder was woefully unlucky not to win the title in 2014 when Crusaders were beating New South Wales Warratahs before Richie Mccaw conceded a lastminute penalty on the halfway line. Blackadder joined Bath on a three-year deal and Tabai Matson – his right-hand man – on a four-year contract. Bruce Craig always had Hooper in mind for a senior role at the club at some point, but the succession plan was for Matson to take over as director of rugby next season. His early return to New Zealand, citing family illness, meant there was at least one year to fill after Blackadder’s three-year contract was due to expire next summer. The man himself will now bridge that gap before passing the baton to Hooper. The beauty of a long-term plan is that you can plot ahead with people knowing their roles and they have collective confidence in the certainty of what is going on. The players know what the picture is going to be in a season or two, rather than the uncertainty of a revolving door. Ideally, you can reduce the turnover of players, as Sarries and Chiefs have done, and with familiarity comes consistency. The downside comes if it goes wrong in the meantime. We’re only five rounds into the season and Blackadder has been given the vote of confidence when we’ve barely finished chapter one of the campaign. What if Bath go on a losing run and fail to qualify for the Champions Cup? What does Bruce do then, if anything? It’s already been more than a decade since the club won a trophy. That’s all hypothetical, but they’re genuine questions. What should be congratulated is the openness shown. They have left supporters in no doubt as to what their intentions are in the coming years when it comes to the backroom staff and development from within. The club’s management believe this is the formula for long-term success. If the pieces successfully fall into place, it might be, it might not. Bath aren’t operating in isolation and there are still a couple of clubs bathing in success that need to be toppled if they are ever to get back to the top of the English game. Now the club have spelled out such a comprehensive plan, they must do their best to stick to it.