Townsend is taking a leaf out of Ange’s playbook
GREGOR WILL LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED AS HE LOOKS FORWARD TO ANOTHER THREE YEARS WITH SCOTLAND
SCOTLAND head coach Gregor Townsend has travelled the world looking for advice from the best but his latest fact-finding journey was much closer to home. Townsend, a life-long Rangers fan, travelled from the Borders to Celtic’s training facility at Lennoxtown to meet title-winning manager Ange Postecoglou to chat to him and learn how he and his backroom staff go about their business.
‘Big Ange was good,’ said Townsend, who named a 41-strong World Cup training squad late last week. ‘I watched them train and they were very welcoming. John Kennedy, Gavin Strachan and Harry Kewell (Postecolglou’s assistants) had lunch with me. Ange had met me before training and then I went to his office for a couple of hours’ chat about coaching philosophy and his coaching journey too.
‘We had a lot of mutual experiences. He has coached in Japan, we’d had the World Cup in Japan in the same area, Yokohama, where he was coaching. He knew a lot of Australian rugby coaches that I know well, so it was great.
‘Getting his philosophy on when he comes to a new club and what he’s looking for. It was good, you pick up things, even picking things from their training — maybe things in the back of your mind get re-ignited and I believe you take similarities away.
‘They have got a game that they believe in and we have got a game that we believe in as well. It’s high-paced attack, it means that the guys have to be skilful, fit and accurate. When you can get those things right, you can cause the opposition problems.’
It was the latest trip carried out by Townsend who has met some of the biggest names in sport in his strive for perfection as a head coach. Always keen to learn from others, he went to see Barcelona train at the Camp Nou.
That was after Pep Guardiola had left, but he finally met up with the Catalan when he took over at Manchester City and had a half-hour private meeting with him before watching his team train.
‘He was so passionate about the process of coaching and I could see that when he was coaching,’ he told Sportsmail at the time. ‘He loves rugby, too. Seriously. The thing he loves about rugby is how we use the ball. He said to me: “I love the fact that you guys pass the ball backwards but you are always looking forward”. That is my philosophy. I want the guys passing backwards to someone looking forward. I wish we could do more of that.’
Former Scotland managers Sir Alex Ferguson, Craig Brown and Gordon Strachan have all been spoken to.
Portugal head coach Roberto Martinez was quizzed at length by Townsend on his coaching philosophy when he was in charge of Belgium. Former World champion boxer Joe Calzaghe was brought in to talk to his players. He also flew to the USA to study how basketball team Golden State Warriors go about their business.
Thinking outside the box, he met with Deacon Blue drummer Dougie Vipond to discuss the dynamics in a band where the lead singer has much more of the limelight compared with other band members and how they coped with that as a group. Townsend has worked with mental skills coach
Aaron Walsh since November and encourages his backroom staff and players to do so, too. The always curious Townsend, who signed a three-year contract extension to keep him in the Scotland job till the summer of 2026, made clear he will leave no stone unturned to get better at his job.
The 50-year-old revealed he would have continued to coach even if he wasn’t offered a deal to stay on with Scotland. He confirmed he had been approached to be the backs coach of the French national side after the World Cup and, although flattered, he could not think of a better job for a proud Scotsman than coaching the national side.
‘There’s challenges, ups and downs with it, but it gives me a huge sense of purpose and more than that, the people that you work with give me joy and I love my job,’ said Townsend. ‘I love coming in and spending time with the coaches. It could be two hours debating the hooker situation as we did ahead of naming the training squad, it could be what we’ve learned in the Six Nations, what we’ve shared from watching Super Rugby. We’ve got a real good dynamic within that coaching group of people who are very good at their jobs, really good at collaborating, but also like a laugh.
‘I feel that there is more to come from this group. We’ve shown a way of playing that, the more we spend time together and start to refine it and get more accurate, then the rewards will grow.
‘Rugby is a game that asks questions and just needs that little bit more accuracy at times, but also understanding because guys play with each other occasionally and don’t get to play with each other week in, week out.’
Townsend knew he wanted to stay in coaching whether a deal was on the table from Scotland or not. ‘The Scotland job is so much bigger than my coaching aspirations,’ he said.
‘It’s team sport, it’s about the team, but it’s also about the country. When I didn’t think I was going to get a contract extension, obviously I had chats with those close to me. I said to my wife, I said to others, that I wanted to stay in coaching, this hasn’t put me off being a coach.
‘Where that would end up, who knows? I’m delighted it’s ended up here and I feel being Scotland coach is what gives me the drive. I think about it a lot. It might be hard to get that same sense of purpose in a different job when you’ve been a Scot working with the national team but I’d still get the joy of coaching again, but that’s for another day.’
Townsend confirmed that there had been an approach from French head coach Fabien Galthie to join his backroom staff, among other approaches, after the World Cup but his hope was always to remain with Scotland.
‘There was a couple of contacts, one with the French national team, but the timing was strange,’ said the Scotland head coach who is
Pep loves rugby. He loves the fact that we pass the ball back but we are always looking forward
fluent in French after playing there for Castres, Montpellier and Brive.
‘I think it was in mid-December and it was like: “We’re going to be playing you guys in a month’s time”. So there was no way there would be any more commitment to it at that stage and it ended up just being more a conversation about coaching. So I never really thought about that again, because we were in France, and once you got on to the Six Nations, that was the big focus so nothing really evolved after that.
‘I think if there wasn’t going to be a contract offer here with Scotland, then yeah, France would have been an option, maybe at club level. It was a time and place where I had really good memories from playing, and obviously the French club game is thriving just now but there is no need to start thinking down that path anymore.’
Townsend agreed the contract extension even although he knew that former Auckland Blues coach Leon MacDonald and Warren Gatland were both sounded out about taking over from him by Scottish Rugby chief executive Mark Dodson. Although some observers believe he was treated shabbily on the matter he insists he still has a good working relationship with Dodson.
‘Obviously he wants success and he gets upset when any of the teams don’t win, like we do as well,’ said Townsend. ‘But the coaching group we have — and the management group has evolved over time, the support staff and medical staff — we’re driven to improve. We’re able to work as a separate entity throughout the season as we always have. This is our biggest challenge but also our most exciting time, the World Cup.’
In an exclusive interview with Sportsmail last week, rugby legend Chris Paterson said the retirement of Stuart Hogg after the World Cup would leave a ‘big hole’ at full-back.
The only specialist 15 apart from Hogg in the World Cup training squad is Ollie Smith of Glasgow Warriors, with Townsend suggesting Blair Kinghorn, who he originally saw as a fly-half, is a candidate to play there, too. He denied there is a shortage of top-class full-backs coming through and cited Edinburgh’s Harry Paterson as an example of someone who could make a breakthrough in the coming years.
‘Blair and Ollie can play Test level and Blair has been doing so for a longer period, but I’ve been really impressed by how Ollie has taken to playing at a higher level,’ he said.
‘He played in the third Test in Argentina last year and was comfortable in that environment, played well against Australia and Italy, and has played well for Glasgow. Ollie will be competing with Blair and who knows who else can come through? But those are two quality players not waiting for Hoggy to retire — they’re competing with Hoggy right now. ‘Harry Paterson has had a couple of opportunities at Edinburgh and I know Mike Blair is a big fan of him. When he played in the 1872 Cup game this year I loved his ability to flush errors and just get back on it, take the game to the opposition. ‘Kyle Rowe, who missed the season with an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament injury) has been back playing the last two or three weeks and he can definitely play full-back. He’s got the all-round game although he’s more of a winger, so there are players that can play that role.
‘Huw Jones has played a couple of times at full-back, although we see him more as a 13. There’s depth there. The back three has always been a position where maybe we’ve not had the depth, we’ve not produced wingers in Scotland in huge numbers, so we’re lucky to have someone like Darcy Graham come through our system. But we know we could do with more coming in those positions.’
Edinburgh’s season is over, with Glasgow’s last game coming against Toulon in the European Challenge Cup final in Dublin next Friday. Townsend is hoping the 17 Glasgow players — not all of whom will be involved against the French outfit — come through the match unscathed.
His advice to Glasgow, the club he coached before taking over the Scotland job, is not to let the occasion get to them.
‘I’ve always played in big games where we’ve got it wrong and it is all about learning from them,’ said Townsend.
‘It’s no bad thing that Glasgow lost at the weekend to Munster in the league quarter-final because it allowed them a week’s physical break before the final as this is the biggest game that they have had to play as a group.
‘I would say to them don’t play the occasion. We made a mistake in the first league final (34-12 to Leinster in 2014) when I was head coach of Glasgow. We went to over to Dublin and we got too pumped up for it. It was a great day for our supporters but we burned so much energy in that first 20 minutes and in the warm-up that we didn’t play to our potential.
‘If Glasgow play to their potential they are going to cause Toulon problems, because the width they play at, the pace they play at, will create try-scoring opportunities.
‘Toulon have got a mixture of power and pace, they’ve got a lot of experience, they will want to dictate the tempo and they are a powerful side, but La Rochelle beat them at the weekend.
‘It will be a very tough game for Glasgow but I still believe that they can win.’