Q&A
Nottingham and Wasps coach Neil Fowkes on step up from Tier 2
Former prop Neil Fowkes is in the unique position of working in both the Premiership and Championship in his capacity as scrum coach at Wasps and head coach at Nottingham, his club side of 22 years. He offers NEALE HARVEY his perspective on the current state of affairs.
You have a unique dual-role, so how have the last nine months panned out?
It’s been a strange one, for sure. At Nottingham we were shut down because of Covid but I was fortunate that they allowed me to interview with Wasps for their vacant scrum coach job and it’s worked out really well. The opportunity came about last May, about eight weeks before Wasps went back into full training, and our chairman, Alistair Bow, and CEO Steve Smith were brilliant. It’s been great for me because coaches want to be in the action rather than sitting in front of laptops. Nottingham made the decision to go to a part-time model as well so it meant I could carry on doing the job at Wasps and things have fallen into place well.
I guess some existing relationships helped pave the way for you at Wasps?
I’ve known (Wasps head coach) Lee Blackett since his Rotherham days and worked closely with his assistants Ian Costello and Matt Everard when they were at Nottingham, while there were also a number of players who’d moved from Nottingham like Tim Cardall and Ben Morris. There’s also been a good flow of dual-registered players like Tom West and Sam Spink who came to Nottingham, so those ties have always been strong.
Must have been satisfying to go from lockdown to helping Wasps reach a Premiership final?
I said to Lee that it had been a pretty incredible few months for me after coming in halfway through a season and ending up in that final. It was surreal but coming into Wasps there was a really good base there already, with good players who had been very well coached by Andy Titterrell and Dai Young, so you were coming at it from a good place and could then put your own twist on things. The lads worked incredibly hard and we got results out of it, so there was a good mindset among the players that they just wanted to get better every time they went out. Hopefully, we can keep building on that.
Seeing your old Nottingham prop Tom West called into the England set-up must be gratifying?
It’s fantastic. Lee always says he wants Wasps boys to strive for that and if guys like Tom, Will Stuart and Alfie Barbeary can get in and around those camps and play international rugby, that’s brilliant.
It’s been cracking to see Tom getting a chance. He’s been working so hard on his game over a decent period of time, both at Nottingham and Wasps. He did really well during the lockdown season and hopefully he’ll get the opportunity to go back into camp at some point. We’ve got others putting their hands up like Gabby Oghre and Tom Cruse.
You must also be pleased to have seen your Nottingham tighthead Oisin Heffernan, 26, getting a move to Northampton last week?
Oisin had been in the front row factory at Leinster and they seem to produce so many quality players that he was edged out there and came over to England to try and further his pro career. He’s another who’s worked incredibly hard on his scrummaging and the Championship’s allowed him to do that. Over the last couple of years, he’s worked with myself and scrum coach Andy Kyriacou and that immense amount of work has paid off. Both Andy and me were former front row forwards so he had a good sounding board and while we’re obviously disappointed at Nottingham to lose a player of his quality, we’re really happy that he’s kicked-on. Hopefully, we can now bring through the next young tighthead and do the same for them.
You’re two weeks away from the new Championship season, how well prepared are Nottingham?
We came back in last November but were only at stage one training for a couple of months and we only started training properly in the second week of this month. We’re a little behind others but we’ll certainly be running fit and ready to go.
Have you sorted out the Covid testing?
Yes. Steve Smith, our CEO, has been brilliant there and we’ve managed to get things in place. There’s a Covid testing hub in Nottingham we’ve been able to get our tests to, so the boys come in on a Monday evening between 4pm and 7pm and we get the results back on the Wednesday in time for training that day. It’s been hard getting to this point but we’ve been able to make it work.
How will you combine your two jobs when it comes to matchdays? Nottingham comes first on matchdays but looking at the fixtures, we might not have too many clashes. When Wasps spoke to me about coming in it was very much on the basis that I’d be involved there as much as I can be, but once Nottingham’s season got back up and running I could attend to that as well.
What do you make of the truncated Championship format that will now see teams playing each other just once?
I’d been quite excited by the conference system that was originally proposed because we’d have had a good few derby matches against Doncaster and Coventry, but now we get to play Saracens at home which is a brilliant prospect. We enjoy playing Cornish Pirates and we get to go to Jersey as well so we’ll look forward to those.
What’s your opinion of the decision to scrap Premiership relegation this season?
I wear two different hats but from a personal point of view, promotion and relegation has always been what I’ve been involved in and I like that. As a player, I remember the lows of Nottingham’s struggles in 2002/3 when we only avoided relegation from the old National Two on the last day of the season. Being stood on the pitch at Stourbridge waiting for the other scores to come in and realising we’d escaped on points difference was incredible, and then the year after we got promoted into National One, which is now the Championship. The excitement of all that is fantastic but I also understand that we live in slightly different times now and the pandemic has had a massive effect on society as a whole, let alone rugby. It’s a tricky one and there needs to be some stability, but at the same time I always enjoy the ebbs and flows of promotion and relegation and how good it is to be part of big occasions at the top of the Championship if you’re pushing for promotion. There’s a lot of edge around that and they’re fantastic games as well.
Presumably then, you wouldn’t want to see the Premiership ring-fenced long-term?
“There needs to be some stability now ...but I’d hate to see long-term ambition go out of the game”
I’d hate to see long-term ambition go out of the game because key moments of my career at Nottingham have been forged around promotion and relegation, having been involved at both ends of the table. I’m a big NFL fan and although I wouldn’t want to see franchising like they have in
America, you could have an expansion system and run things in the Premiership centrally with a commissioner who heads things up. It’s important we don’t lose the club aspect of it but there are other ways we can do things while maintaining the essence of clubs and what aspiration is all about.
Nottingham always used to have Premiership ambitions but I guess that’s changed?
We’ve had to change our model and become part-time because Nottingham were never going to live beyond their means – Alistair Bow is pretty certain on that. It’s an old club and we want it to be around for another 147 years so we’ll cut our cloth accordingly. But we’re going to be as competitive as we can be and really fight it out. We’ve been punching above our weight for years and this coming season will be no different.
How’s your dual-registration relationship with Leicester stacking up with Steve Borthwick now head coach there?
We’ve always had a close relationship with Leicester and always will. They’re Nottingham’s nearest neighbours, we’ve always worked really well together and even when their coaching personnel has changed there’s been a good bond. We’re lucky to have had four of their lads come to us this season but there’ll be lads from other places as well. We’ll have a couple from Wasps, while Sale are looking to get their guys some rugby and I expect my old boss Glenn Delaney will be on the phone from the Scarlets at some stage. We cast our net a bit wider because Leicester don’t want everyone in one place and they work with Coventry and Ampthill as well.
How successful has dual-registration been for Nottingham and the players involved?
Will Stuart and Tom West from Wasps have been here in the past so there’s two great examples, while Beno Obano came up from Bath earlier in his career. Olly Woodburn played for us and across the board we’ve helped loads of guys down the years. Calum Green, Harry Williams, Dan Cole, Tom Youngs and Alex Corbisiero were all here at various times and part of our job is to provide that breeding ground for guys to play rugby. Nottingham play really positive rugby and all those guys will tell you they benefitted from being here. I packed down with Tom Youngs in one of his first games after switching from centre to hooker, so to then see him, Corbisiero and Cole playing for the Lions in 2013 was fantastic.
How do you see the future of the Championship?
There’s going to be a period of rebuilding for clubs as they find their feet again. There could potentially be no crowds this season so we’ll have to rebuild that side of things, too. But I do think the Championship still has to be there for that player pathway we’ve spoken about, to find the next Oisin Heffernan who can kick-on and play Premiership rugby. It also provides a pathway for officials, coaches and support staff and one of our S&C staff has just joined Leicester.
In Ian Costello and Matt Everard, we’ve had coaches go to Wasps, and you’ve only got to look at Lee Blackett as a fantastic example of the quality that has come out of the second tier. Without the Championship we’d miss that breeding ground. Things are tricky at the minute and finances are tight, but hopefully the league will be recognised for what it does. You’ve only got to look at a lad like Harry Williams, below, who was at Nottingham before moving to Jersey and then suddenly he’s playing for Exeter and England. Whatever we do with the Championship we’ve got to think very carefully about it and make sure it’s the right thing for English rugby. That means getting everyone around the table – PRL, the Championship and the RFU.
You helped forge links between Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham Rugby, how important is that relationship now?
As well as coaching and playing for Nottingham under Glenn Delaney, I was appointed head of rugby at NTU in 2013 and we really pushed it as a rugby university. David Ross, our current backs and attack coach, has carried on that work and it’s a handin-glove operation that’s worked well for eight years. There are some good lads and late developers who’ve come through that programme, with Tim Cardall at Wasps being someone who played a good deal of rugby at NTU and Nottingham before kicking on after finishing his degree. I hope that relationship continues to flourish.
On a personal level, you were capped by England U19s in 1999 but remained faithful to Nottingham. Why did you never move up?
There were a couple of potential opportunities but I always had my heart set on going to Leeds Met University to study sport and that was my passion. I lived the student life and travelled back at weekends to play for Nottingham. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play professionally because I did, but I enjoyed the social side at Nottingham as well and guys like Matt Parr, Joe Duffy, Alex Loney, Alex Dodge
“The biggest thing I’ve noticed since being at Wasps is just how ferocious the Premiership is”
and Tim Usasz are friends for life. That’s probably what attracted me to stay.
What if you got a bigger job offer from elsewhere?
I’d have to think pretty hard about it. Twenty-two years at one club is a long time and when it’s your home city as well, that’s a big thing. It’s not something I’ve considered too much.
Back to Wasps, how do you rate your chances of reaching another Premiership final?
The biggest thing I’ve noticed since being at Wasps is that the Premiership’s just so ferocious from top to bottom. All the teams are so close and the margins so fine it surprised me at first. Against Saints it could have gone either way but we lost, and then at Worcester last week we came storming back and had to grit out the win. You have to make sure you’re performing every week – if you drop off by just ten per cent, you’ll be punished.
Is the difference between the Championship and Premiership that stark?
Yes. There are no mismatches in the Premiership and it’s relentlessly ferocious. As Lee Blackett always says, the accumulation of points is so important, whether it’s turning four points into five or a loss into one or two points, it can be the difference between finishing first, fourth or eighth at the end of the season.