Ready for Wales
Rowntree and Worsley on life with Georgia
The mantra that Georgia have adopted for the World Cup, preceded by a hashtag in numerous posts across the team’s official social media channels, is “Happy in Battle”.
Two of their coaches, Graham Rowntree and Joe Worsley, certainly seem eager to enjoy this campaign, which begins against Wales today. A pair of former England internationals, they possess 132 caps, as well as four British and Irish Lions Tests between them, as players.
In various guises, at least one has been involved in each of the past six World Cups. Their 2019 tournament, as part of Milton
Haig’s back-room team, will offer up a markedly different experience – but not without laughs along the way.
That much is apparent as they explain the trial-and-error process of navigating the language barrier.
“Particularly in team sessions, you have to have a concise message that is translated quickly,” says
Worsley, who joined the Georgia set-up in the summer on a four-month contract as a defensive consultant after leaving his head coach position at Union Bordeaux Begles. Calvin Morriss, aperformance adviser for World
Rugby with a decade behind him as an England fitness coach, made the introduction.
“I think it would be good for a lot of coaches to do. Some people talk too much.”
Through a chuckle, Rowntree takes up the topic: “A lot of the players speak good English but a lot of what you say – particularly in the heat of the moment – takes a lot of translating. They’ll say: ‘Sorry, what?’ and you have to go: ‘Well, I said…’”
The conversation bounces back to Worsley. “Using expressions is a good one,” he adds. “If you say ‘a bird in the hand’ to someone …”
Rowntree nips in to finish Worsley’s anecdote. “They’ll ask you, ‘How would you hold the bird?’. If you say ‘The horse has bolted’, they might ask, ‘What horse?’
“I’ve picked up some Georgian words and have tried to do half-time chats in Georgian with one of the conditioning coaches translating. But it wastes time, trying to be too clever.”
Cultural quirks of communication are important, too. One-onone chats take precedence over humiliating rollickings.
“Getting rinsed in a debrief in England is quite normal from a young age,” Worsley adds. “In France, it didn’t happen and doesn’t happen [with Georgia]. You have to be aware of that because, especially early on, you can really torpedo your influence if you do certain things which are taboo.”
In his own words, Rowntree comes from “an environment where you could challenge a player in front of their peers”. Between two warm-up Tests against Scotland last month, he dipped into his Leicester Tigers contact book. Edinburgh, the current team of Rowntree’s former ABC Club colleague Richard Cockerill, hosted Georgia for a day.
They have won 37 of their past 39 matches in the second-tier Six Nations, suffering a single loss, 8-7 against Romania in 2017, and winning eight of the past nine tournaments. With that in mind, it felt like the recent doubleagainst header Scotland represented a soapbox to showcase their Six Nations credentials. Then again, Scotland came into the two fixtures on the back of two meetings with France. By contrast, Georgia had undergone one training game with the Southern Kings after a fixture against Russia was cancelled. The aggregate scoreline, 80-19 in Scotland’s favour, will have provided a reality check ahead of facing Wales in Toyota. Uruguay, Fiji and Australia make up their Pool D schedule.
Mamuka Gorgodze’s surprise return from international retirement provides steel. He featured in two wins, over Tonga and Namibia, in 2015. Rowntree suggests two more victories is “almost a minimal standard” in 2019. “They’ve played more than us,” he says. “Particularly Fiji. They seem to have played every week. We’ve been watching them closely and we’ve done a lot of hard training – match-scenario training, full-on training and fitness. From 30-degree heat in Turkey and back in Tbilisi, we’ve put a lot in the tank.”
It will not have been lost on Rowntree that Georgia’s four pool opponents are the precise same quartet that his England side came up against four years ago. A fiercely proud and charismatic man, he bristles at the mention of 2015 and what he might have learned in the interim, which included a stint at Harlequins.
“I’ve learned a lot from good and bad experiences,” Rowntree says. “As long as you learn, and I have, you become a better coach for it, more rounded.”
He heads to Munster to join up with Johann van Graan and Stephen Larkham on a stellar coaching ticket at the end of Georgia’s time in Japan. The province will have designs on silverware. Plans are less concrete for laid-back Worsley. Rowntree teases him – “call me on this number, email me at this address” – when he states that a return to England will not be in the offing just yet.
A period of transition awaits Georgia as well. Haig, the experienced New Zealander, leaves for Japanese outfit Suntory Sungoliath at the end of a progressive, eight-year tenure. Georgia beat Scotland at this year’s World Under-20 Championship and Rowntree points to 19-year-old hooker Vano Karkadze, recently signed by Brive, as evidence of a strong pathway. Talented scrum-halves Gela Aprasidze and Vasil Lobzhanidze, 21 and 22 respectively, illustrate that the production line is diversifying. Fly-half Tedo Abzhandadze, with Lobzhanidze at Brive and just 20, started both games against Scotland. But forward strength, spearheaded by props such as Mikheil Nariashvili of Montpellier, will be Georgia’s chief weapon. And Rowntree has relished working with their pack.