All eyes on America now but ‘shock’ Bath axe still grates
UNCEREMONIOUSLY dumped by Bath in December 2013, Gary Gold has successfully rebuilt his career and is now in a position to help the US Eagles soar to new heights.
But the South African is still clearly scarred by the episode at the Rec which saw him marginalised by owner Bruce Craig and then ousted from his DoR role with Mike Ford taking charge of on-field matters.
Ironically Ford was also surprisingly shown the door by Craig, too, and like Gold, is now coaching in the States with Dallas.
Gold, right, who took on short-term fire-fighting roles with Newcastle and then Worcester before becoming John Mitchell’s successor with the Eagles, says the hiring and firing mentality creeping into rugby is clearly not a recipe for success.
“Alex Ferguson wrote in his autobiography that people didn’t keep their jobs because they were good coaches, they became good coaches because they kept their jobs, and that’s the difference,” he said.
“You only have to look at the teams who made this year’s Premiership semifinals and the last few finals, and it’s no coincidence they’ve had the same person in charge for a long period of time.
“Wasps went through a torrid time, they would have been relegated had we (Newcastle) got a bonus point when we beat them on the last day at their place, yet Dai (Young) has come through all of that and is still here to this day.
“What Rob Baxter and Mark McCall have done (at Exeter and Saracens) is a fairytale story and Dean Richards has kept the group together and done brilliantly at Newcastle since he took over from me in 2012.” After winning promotion from the Championship, Richards presided over only eight wins in his first 50 Premiership matches in charge. Yet the Falcons grew together year-on-year and last season made a firstever play-off appearance. “Newcastle had done nothing for the first couple of years but there was never any talk of Dean losing his job,” Gold added. “I know Semore Kurdi (Newcastle’s owner) and what an exceptionally good man he is. He deserves a lot of credit for the way he runs his club. He didn’t panic and look at what they are achieving now.
“It was the same at Saracens. Nigel (Wray) realised, through Brendan Venter and Edward Griffiths, that chopping and changing coaches, which is what they’d been doing for 12 years, had brought little success. They’d had Rod Kafer, Eddie Jones, Steve Diamond and Mike Ford before Brendan stopped the rot. I’m sure they’re happy that they stuck with Mark McCall who has been there a long time now.”
While firmly focused on the task of turning USA into a credible superpower in rugby, Gold admits to still being puzzled at the circumstances behind him losing his job at Bath.
“This is my 18th year of coaching and that is the only time that anything like that has happened. It happened when we were third in the Premiership and unbeaten in Europe. It came as a massive shock to myself and my family.
“You kind of calibrate yourself to understanding that if your performances are poor then you’re going to be under pressure, as we did with the Springboks in 2010. You can live with that but when it is an unexplained situation, it is different. The following year they (Bath) got to the Premiership final so the foundations were there for them to kick on.”
As with all the clubs mentioned, the buck stops with the owner, and it is clear where Gold believes the blame lies for Bath’s failure to land silverware, and it’s not the coaches.
“Todd (Blackadder) is a world-class coach, Tabai (Matson) is and Toby (Booth) is too, yet there are where they are now. It’s for them to figure out why.”