Harlequins
Mark Evans: State of the Union 2010
By HarleyQuin
May 12 2010
For the fifth straight year Mark Evans sat down with Harley Quin to chat about various issues relevant to Harlequins. As with last year, the conversation took place just hours before the final home game of the season.
HQ: Well Mark, given the events of last summer, what’s your take on this season?
ME: In about three weeks I will have been here 10 years. You look at that period and you say we went 11th, 9th, 7th 6th, relegated, Division 1, 7th, 6th, 2nd and now 7th or 8th. The most difficult two years were clearly the year we got relegated and this year. Problems of our own creation, but not an easy year on many levels - psychologically as much as anything I think.
If you had asked us last June or July where we would like to be (I remember Dean and I sitting down and talking about it) we were thinking a par position would probably be 5th, pushing for the playoffs. So, to come 7th or 8th, for understandable reasons, is no disgrace but it’s not where we wanted to be either.
HQ: What did Quins miss by playing the majority of the season without a DoR? I guess I’m asking what a DoR does at Harlequins!
ME: DoR at different clubs is a different role. What did we miss? Any organisation, unless you are extremely fortunate, is bound to suffer in the short run if you haven’t got somebody who is running the key part of the organisation or the club. So, to effectively go three quarters of the season having to allocate the role out is difficult. Everything gets done but the biggest difficulty is in terms of leadership and clarity of role for the rest of the people in that part of the business.
Quite understandably you say “Well the people who coach the team are the same people”, but then you have to change the selection process; you have to change your media positioning and who deals with all that; you have to do the recruitment and negotiations side; share out the long term facility development and training grounds, that kind of stuff.
People have to step up, but the thing you can’t replace, no matter how you divide it up, is the leadership element of it. People are then working in a little bit of a vacuum; I think that’s a fair comment.
Your only alternative is that you appoint an interim, or you replace very early – and we thought about both those options and decided against.
HQ: After a run of three consecutive seasons, how big a blow is it to miss out on Heineken Cup Rugby next season?
ME: It is a blow in the sense that it’s what virtually every club in the league, at the beginning of the year, would say is what distinguishes ‘a successful playing year’ from a relatively unsuccessful one.
There may be a couple of clubs that doesn’t apply to. I expect Leicester Tigers would say (and probably only Leicester would say at the moment) “We’ll always be in the Heineken”. I know we nearly stopped them 3 years ago in the last game, but on the whole Tigers would say “Our minimum is Top Four”.
I don’t think another club would say that, maybe Northampton but probably not yet. Every other club except the one promoted (I’m sure Leeds were saying “Our aim is to stay up”), certainly publicly and probably privately would say “We need to be Top Six”.
So, by definition, five clubs each year are going to be disappointed. Certainly externally in the media and support base, that’s probably how you are judged as well.
HQ: How hard has the recession impacted on the economics of rugby? Do you think it has ‘bottomed out’ yet? There seems to be conflicting views within the Premiership regarding money. On one hand people are saying that the Salary Cap restricts their competitive abilities in European competition but, realistically, how many teams could sustain a Euro 8 million playing budget like they have in France?
ME: None. In terms of viability none. That would drive every single club, including Leicester, into a loss making situation. Interestingly enough, a lot of clubs can’t sustain £4 million and be viable.
The recession, has it had an impact? Yes in certain revenue streams – Hospitality definitely. Some it hasn’t. Sponsorship’s been strong, but your key one is gates. This is a ticketing business.
So, if you look at our average ticketing sales this year, in the league we average 11,400, in Europe 11,000 and in the LV just under 10,000. That gives an average of 11,100. If you compare that with last year, which is not quite comparing like with like because of the Heineken Quarter Final and Premiership Semi-Final, it was 11,600 – so it’s dropped by about 500.
In percentage terms, in a recession, that’s probably not a bad effort. However, we had grown crowds eight, nine years in a row and this year we were budgeting 12,400 so there’s your real differential. Against budget that’s a loss of revenue of about £300-350,000.
HQ: Looking forward to next season from a squad perspective, will the Club be announcing many more new signings? Would you agree that the front five in particular would benefit from another couple of quality players?
ME: Yes, we will have a couple more. We’re going to run it on a 33 man main squad and 9 man full time academy. That’s not dissimilar to London Irish; I understand that Saracens are working on an identical 33/9; Northampton have dropped to 31 and however many they have full time in their academy.
I think that model is starting to become quite common. That’s about what you get on a £4 million Salary Cap and £200,000 for the Academy.
Front five – perceptions are interesting on that one because if you look at some of the games where we’ve played poorly this year, it’s often not been in the front five where that’s happened. I’m thinking, for instance, of the Wembley game. We really didn’t play well but Saracens got absolutely destroyed in the lineout, mashed in the scrums and yet we lost heavily. Now that isn’t the front five.
I think there is a perception of our squad whereby the household names tend to be in the back 10. From that it’s easy enough to make a case that where you need to strengthen is the front five. We have had a lot of injuries in that area. We’ve been without Ollie Kohn all year; without Jim Evans effectively all year because fair play to him, he played with his shoulder hanging off for the first two to three months – he really shouldn’t have been playing; George Robson was suspended for two months.
Any squad in the land, if you lose that sort of number from one area of the team, it’s going to hit you. Ironically, the other area where we have had a lot of injuries is wing, back three! David Strettle has been about the only one who has remained fit and available all year. We lost Tom to suspension until November, Gonzalo Camacho got injured against Ospreys and hasn’t played since, Seb Stegmann hasn’t played all year. I’m sure if you looked at the squad at the beginning of the year and said Sam Smith’s going to start for the First Team, you’d have thought “Well, not in a million years” because there’s just too many guys in the back three ahead of him. He has, on a number of occasions – and played well.
So, sometimes it’s luck. You balance your squad up – and I thought our squad was slightly unbalanced with too many back three players and maybe not enough front five players but, as it turned out, we got hit in both those areas.
Gary Botha left which was unexpected. You cant legislate for that and you cant replace a Gary Botha in the middle of a season, although Matt Cairns has done really well. A bit of a conspiracy of events I suppose, to a degree, but our strength in the front five got quite compromised.
However, with Ollie Kohn back and George Robson available all year, John Andress developed this season (as did James Johnston to be fair) and of course Mark Lambert hasn’t been fit for months. That’s an awful lot of players from one area of the team and actually in those circumstances the front five have performed pretty well. Would they have performed better if we’d had all the personnel available all year? Yeah, probably.
You look at other areas of the team and we’ve had very few injuries at all. The middle five: Skinner, Robshaw, Guest and Easter, Care, Dickson, Clegg and Evans, we haven’t really had to go outside those players. Eight players for five positions. Who’s to say that next year you don’t get all your injuries in the middle five?
You can’t carry 43, 44 players under the Salary Cap, so you are always going to get caught somewhere. That’s just the nature of the sport and the league.
HQ: Is it fair to say that, due to the strength of the Academy in recent years, a large slice of the player budget has rightly gone towards retaining Quins’ home grown talent as it matures and gains International recognition – which reduces the cash available to make ‘name’ signings from elsewhere?
ME: We make no secret of that. Three years ago George Robson, Chris Robshaw, Tom Guest, Mike Brown, Jordan Turner-Hall were all barely out of the Academy and therefore on a salary way below what they are on now.
You really don’t want to lose, if you can help it, players who have been with you since they were 14, 15, 16. Sometimes you have to. Sometimes you let them go because you don’t think they are quite good enough, sometimes they are blocked – in the sense that even though they could eventually play in the Premiership there are people in those positions who are better, so you just have to let them go.
You have to accept that there is no point putting all that time, effort and some expense into a player aged between 16 and 21 and then not pay enough to keep them. The next group will be people like George Lowe, Chris York, Sam Smith, Joe Mahler and probably then people like Will Collier, Luke Wallace, Sam Stuart, Tom Casson, Ollie Lindsay-Hague and Ross Chisholm. Cor, that was along list, wasn’t it!
Anybody who went to Leicester on Bank Holiday Monday would look at that game and think goodness me. In the starting line-ups 23 players had come out of the academies of both teams. It was a high quality game, a really high quality game.
There were players there who really looked like they would certainly make the first team at Harlequins and maybe further. They wont be on £15,000 a year for ever, so to enable you to keep them you are going to have to let some more highly paid players go.
That’s why Dave Strettle is going to Saracens. It’s a shame its David, it might’ve been Mike Brown, Jordan, it could have been anybody. They knew very early on, back in October, with all of our first choice back five out of contract that we could only keep four of them. If two of them went we’d replace one, if three of them went we’d replace two. We just didn’t have the resources (within the Salary Cap) to do the other stuff we needed to do in the areas we’ve just talked about.
That’s just the way it is. It’s a shame, we’d have loved to have kept David. He had an offer, which was a pretty decent offer but we said to them all “Look, last one over the line the offer will be withdrawn because we cant fit it in the Cap”.
HQ: You pioneered the ‘Big Game’ concept at Twickenham with remarkable success. Quins’ local rivals followed suit this season, with Saracens playing four games at Wembley and Wasps hosting both a London Double Header match against Quins and a St George’s Day game at Twickenham. Do you have any plans to play more home games at Twickenham or are you happy with one game per season?
ME: Thank you. No, I’m quite happy with one really. You’ve always got the ‘Munster Factor’. Lets be brutally honest, if you draw Munster, maybe increasingly Leinster in the Heineken there is a great temptation to take it to a bigger stadium.
There’s a sound financial argument and a sound rugby argument in the sense that if you’ve got a fixture whereby the demand is such that you could sell lets say twice the capacity (of the Stoop) you need to open that up to all the people who want to come and watch.
In terms of creating another big event I’m pretty cautious if I’m honest. It takes a lot of work, a lot of selling, a lot of preparation and I’d rather have one that was really big and really successful, than two or three that were just alright.
I’m also pretty conscious of retaining value in the season ticket and I’m well aware that there is a hard core of fans who will always like it at the Stoop. From an emotional affinity and enjoyment point of view they prefer here to a bigger, what they perceive as a less friendly, colder environment. I understand that entirely.
You’re balancing it up really and when you take all those things into consideration, my feel is that one is worthwhile on a whole load of levels. Beyond that I think you tend to dilute your core product a bit.
HQ: This season exactly half Quins home games will have kicked off at 3.00 on a Saturday afternoon – 8 league games out of 11, with all Cup games at some other time/day. Next season sees an additional TV contract with ESPN. What impact will that and participation in the Amlin Challenge Cup have for fans regarding kick off days and times? Approximately how many Saturday afternoon home games do you expect next season?
ME: I have no idea. I’m being honest with you, I don’t know. All I can say is that whenever it is within our control we will kick off at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.
Now, being located where we are has always caused us a problem with November Internationals and now some of the Six Nations as well. We will never be able to play on a Saturday when England are at home and you cannot schedule us away four weeks in a row in November. From a rugby point of view and a competitive point of view that would be highly undesirable. That isn’t going to happen so you are probably going to get a couple of home games in the Autumn and one during the Six Nations on a Sunday.
Now the TV thing. I think it will depend on who we draw in the Amlin. The bigger the teams – and there are some – Stade Francais, Brive, maybe Biarritz are in it, the bigger teams you have in your group the less likely you are to get bounced off Saturdays.
You have to accept that if you are in the Heineken, over Friday, Saturday and Sunday they want to schedule eight games. That’s just how it is. Not ideal, but all you can say is – you put it on Saturday at 3 o’clock when you can.
HQ: Time for my annual Rugby League question. I read recently that you attend their Board Meetings and they are now paying tenants at the Stoop. In April we also had another double header day featuring both codes at home on the same afternoon. What would be the ‘tipping point’ for a more formal partnership between the two codes under one true umbrella – not just in name alone?
ME: I cant see it. I really cant see it. I think that is extremely unlikely.
HQ: Finally, for three seasons since the return from ND1 there was consistent progress – 10 wins, then 12, then 14. This season there will be more losses than wins. What would you target for next season to demonstrate that the team is ‘back on track’?
ME: I think it goes back to the beginning of this conversation. Any year in which we qualify for the Heineken Cup is an acceptable year and any year we don’t is a disappointing year. That is not to say that’s our aim, because I think we would aim for more than that, but that’s the key indicator.
Once you get beyond that, every competition is a cup competition. You get to the last four of the Guinness, it’s a cup. Get out of your group in either European competition – it’s a cup. LV is what it says on the tin – it’s a cup.
You look at your core competition, which is the Premiership, with the wage cap and other equalisation policies within it and you think “Well we’re a pretty good side, we’ve got a pretty good organisation”. Then you look around the league and see that Leicester are strong, Northampton, Saracens, Bath, Gloucester are a strong club, Wasps have still got a very good playing squad , Irish, ourselves – you come up with eight teams.
Its interesting to think of Sale, who not too long ago won the Championship. It might change this summer, it will all depend on funding, but you would look at Sale, Leeds, Newcastle and whoever comes up and ask have they got the infra-structure and the playing squads of the other eight? Possibly not.
Therefore, six from eight. The sides finishing seventh and eight will always feel that’s a disappointing season. I’m sure Gloucester will say that, whereas Wasps and Irish will say “Well, we’re in the Heineken and we challenged hard, we had our moments and only a couple of pivotal games stopped us being in the Top 4.” Teams in the Top 4 will say “That’s a pretty good year let’s go on and win it’.
That’s really the way it goes. I think those eight clubs, under their current ownership, financial situation and squads all look to me to be highly competitive and could come anywhere between 1st and 8th.
I’m sure we can all look back over a 22 game season every year and think we could have lost that one, or we should have won that one – woulda, shoulda, coulda. The margin is really quite small and who is to say that Leeds with more central funding this year, maybe Sale might re-invest, that number might become ten.
Look, it can go the other way. Northampton got relegated in 2006 with, its generally thought, the second highest wage bill in the league – which is extra-ordinary. It can happen. Things can knock any of those eight clubs off course. You can get yourself in a right old muddle – self imposed, pure bad luck or just momentum not going your way.
However, you’d have to say, if things stay as they are, you’d look at the Premiership and say 8/4. There seems to be a differential coming. It can change quickly but, sitting here in May, that’s what probability would suggest.
HQ: Mark thanks – we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to ComeAllWithin. Good luck next season!
ME: Not at all. Thank you.
©2010
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Quote:ME
you would look at Sale, Leeds, Newcastle and whoever comes up and ask have they got the infra-structure and the playing squads of the other eight?
On the evidence of this season that's right. Which is a shame because, other than whoever gets promoted it is the three northern teams who seem to be falling behind. There are positive signs on the pitch from Leeds, but they still have quite tiny crowds. I hope that top class English RU doesn't just become a southern sport.
George Lowe seems to be the one this season that has found the gaps on the shoulders and found the extra half yard. I think this is due to being a unknown quantity. Next season will be more difficult for him. But each year we need to find someone or lots of someones that can create that advantage.
HQ thanks for getting this to a wide audience
Having said that the latter part of the season was far better.
The game's afoot;
Follow your spirit: and upon this charge,
Cry — God for Harry! England and Saint George
Concurrently, if, as Deadly suggests, refs will favour attacking play (which we are good at), then our defence (at times very leaky) also needs to improve: we do win good turnover ball, but not nearly as much this year - penalised for killing play too often. Important areas for improvement, as well stopping the aimless kicking that infected the early and mid-season.
Hopefully COS will work on these aspects, but will need to be aware of the next reflexive knee-jerk reaction by refs to any new IRB/ERC etc law/rule changes that they might like to fiddle with during the off-season.
I look forward to BRW's end of term report for a full discussion on the season and what COS and the team will need to do next season (from our perspective). I imagine lively debate will follow...
Of course that my mean that I agree with you.
