Ex-ospreys head coach is forging a fresh career in southern hemisphere, writes Gavin Mairs Tandy bucked trend to head Down Under G
etting into work these mornings has not been a problem for Steve Tandy. Each day he rises at 5.45am and by the time he reaches his office at the New South Wales Waratahs’ new training base in Daceyville, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney an hour later, the temperature is already nearing 68F (20C). Welcome to the world of one of British rugby’s coaching pioneers.
Having spent six years as head coach of the Ospreys before he was sacked in January, Tandy is reaping the rewards of his decision to go against the tide of southernhemisphere domination of many of the key coaching positions in Europe and forge his own career Down Under.
Last week, the Waratahs announced that Tandy had been appointed their defence coach for next season, having impressed during a temporary stint with them during last season’s Super Rugby campaign.
While Australians, including head coach Eddie Jones, feature prominently in England’s management team for today’s Quilter Series match against the Wallabies at Twickenham, Tandy represents a rarity. Geoff Parling, the former England and Lions lock, will follow him to Australia next year, having accepted a coaching job with the Melbourne Rebels.
But other than Ronan O’gara, who is a coach at New Zealand Super Rugby side the Crusaders, the northern-hemisphere influence in the south is negligible. For years, southern coaches have travelled to Europe to broaden their CVS and either progress to top jobs, as Warren Gatland and Joe Schmidt have done with Wales and Ireland, or return to international posts at home, like Australia head coach Michael Cheika and his New Zealand counterpart, Steve Hansen.
But are Tandy and Parling about to reverse the trend? Tandy had the benefit of pursuing a link with Andrew Hore, his former boss at the Ospreys, who is now chief executive of the Waratahs. But it involved risk, too, as he initially left his family behind in Wales and paid his own way.
“It would have been easy to stay at home. I’ve always wanted to be more rounded as a coach, the best coach I can be for the players, and to put myself through new experiences,” said Tandy. “I came out last February for personal development. I only planned to stay for two or three weeks. But I ended up staying the whole season.
“The reason to come here was to get right out of my comfort zone. I remember the first skills session I did. I coached some big names like Alun Wyn Jones and Dan Lydiate back home but when you are trying to present your ideas to the likes of Michael Hooper and Israel Folau, it is completely different.
Tandy lived with the Waratahs’ head coach, Daryl Gibson, for four weeks, chewing the fat each night about the differences between the two hemispheres. It has given him an insight into the defensive challenge that awaits England at Twickenham today. “The thing that blew me away was the unstructured stuff they do in training,” Tandy said. “They are really comfortable with it. Back home there is a lot of structure such as a kicking game into defence, whereas here, particularly with the Waratahs, it is about being comfortable with ball in hand, identifying space in broken play.
“When you see Israel, [Bernard] Foley, Hooper and [Kurtley] Beale in open space it is great to see but it is not just the backs, the forwards are comfortable with the ball. It is something they hammer home about skills, catch and pass and the movement on to the ball.
“There is more time on defence back home, probably 50-50 between defence and attack and a lot of time spent on kicking strategies. They do that here but the main focus is on scoring tries, so they play more unstructured games all geared to that.”
While Tandy would urge more British coaches to follow suit, Mark Evans, the former Harlequins chief executive, who spent two years in that role with Melbourne Storm rugby league side, believes the route south will remain difficult.
“If you look at Australasia, because they are smaller economies, the number of posts that are available is small,” he said. “There are nine head coach jobs at provincial/club level compared to 40 in the three European leagues.
“The other factor is the wage differential, with the exception being rugby league, where the coaching salaries are higher.
“They create more coaches than there are positions to be filled, while a lot of the markets in the southern hemisphere are also closed off. New Zealanders, for example, don’t tend to appoint many non-new Zealanders.
“There is no doubt that in terms of a coaching development pathway, the advantage that Australasia has got is Europe.
“It would be fabulous for European coaches to go to be a head coach in Super Rugby. But they will probably have to take a pay cut and you will have to be pretty driven to do it and prepared to make a financial sacrifice and uproot your family. It remains tough to get a gig.”