STEVE DIAMOND
After Steve Diamond’s shock departure, Jon Newcombe looks at the highs and lows of his time as DoR of Sale Sharks
Jon Newcombe analyses the highs and lows of his time at Sale
SALE SHARKS were rock bottom of the Premiership and staring into the abyss when Steve Diamond took over as head coach at the end of December 2012. More often than not – ten times out of 14 up to that point – the team entering the festive period in 12th place would go on to be relegated. Only London Irish in 1997/98, Newcastle (2002/03), Northampton (2004/05) and Leeds (2009/10) had bucked the trend.
The Sharks were a shambles with Bryan Redpath having been demoted earlier in the season and John Mitchell coming and going in a matter of weeks. Sale had won only one of their first 11 games and had just been thumped 62-0 by Toulon in Europe. Diamond had overseen the mess as CEO but in swapping the boardroom for his natural habitat of the boot room, the former Sale hooker managed to instigate a momentous turnaround. Sale finished the Premiership in 10th, 12 points clear of the trap door, with six wins and a draw in the second half of the campaign. Having saved the club from their first-ever relegation, Diamond decided to stay in the job on a permanent basis. With his and the club’s fortunes now interwoven, the 52-year-old began his odyssey of modelling Sale into rugby’s version of ‘the northern powerhouse’. That objective is still some way off being achieved but he can look back with great pride at a win percentage of 49 from his 175 Premiership games in charge.
SHINING DIAMOND
Saving the club from relegation Who knows what would have happened to Sale had they not kept their top-flight status? Then club owner Brian Kennedy admitted at the end of the 2012/13 season such a fate was unthinkable, and that Sale could have easily ‘done a Leeds’ and never come back up. Diamond gets criticised for his ‘old-school’ ways but the simplicity of his message and the clarity with which it was put across was key to rediscovering the winning formula. He partly credits this trait to his time as Russia national head coach. “You can get away to some degree with 30 words in training; tackle, get-up, get-down, stop, go,” Diamond said.
Longevity in the game
In a results-driven business like Premiership rugby, to survive as long as he does deserves acclaim. Only five others have been in charge for more Premiership games at one club than Diamond: Rob Andrew at Newcastle (202), Rob Baxter at Exeter (233), Mark McCall at Saracens (223), Jim Mallinder at Northampton (216) and Dai Young at Wasps (189). Some would say he created his own fiefdom to protect his position but his sudden departure this week shows that nobody’s job comes with a 100 per cent guarantee.
Career transformer
Diamond will be the first to admit he’s not got a squeaky clean image himself, and as a result, he has historically taken players on board who others might not touch with a bargepole. Danny Cipriani went to Sale a lost soul and ended up playing rugby from the gods. Aside from the Otley run-bus collision incident, most of his headlines were about his exploits on the pitch. Similarly, Aussie rugby watchers point to flyhalf James O’Connor’s two-year spell at the Sharks as being transformative to his career, which is now back on track with the Queensland Reds and the Wallabies.
Red-hot recruitment
Diamond’s ability in player recruitment is almost second to none. You’d expect World Cup winners, Faf de Klerk and Lood de Jager, to hanker after a move to a London club, not unfashionable Sale. But Diamond’s gift of the gab is able to sell players a dream. Marland Yarde and Chris Ashton both signed for him, while scrum-halves of the calibre of Mike Phillips and Peter Stringer have donned the No.9 jersey during his time in charge.
Ace Academy
Sale’s academy has been held in high esteem for a long time but the pipeline of talent through to the first team has probably never been more plentiful than under Diamond. The Curry twins, Ben and Tom, and the James brothers, Luke and Sam, are first team regulars. The target is for 75 per cent of the team to be homegrown.
DULL DIAMOND Play-offs prove elusive
Having achieved a second-place finish as Jim Mallinder’s right-hand man at Sale in the early noughties, Diamond would have hoped to have made the top four again in his own right. Last season, Sale looked almost certain to achieve that goal only for Covid-19 to scupper their plans. Diamond will point to the fact they’ve only just started to spend up to their salary cap budget in the last couple of seasons as a reason why they’ve not broken through the topfour glass ceiling. But, even so, they should have done better than three top-half-of-the-table finishes in seven seasons. Sale did, however, win their first trophy since the 2006 Premiership title when lifting the Premiership Cup last season.
Controversy
Some form of controversy has never been far away from Diamond during his time at the Sharks. He has had various run-ins with the RFU disciplinary panel, and an unsavoury public spat with a member of the Press did him no favours. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 outbreak that led to playoff heartache had people questioning what sort of ship he runs. However, the RFU quickly exonerated Diamond and the club from any blame. When tarred with the ‘old-school’ brush when it comes to man-management, Diamond’s defence normally centres on how Sale have historically had the lowest injury rate in the Premiership because of their low-load management during the week.
“In swapping the boardroom for the boot room Diamond instigated a momentous turnaround”