By Whaley Shark
March 12 2011

The soap opera, which we sometimes seem to have become, rolls on. There’s a heady blend of squabbles and sulks, gossip and rumour, with an occasional dash of fact thrown in. The Whaley Shark tries to work out what’s going on between the battered ears of our new Executive Director of Sport.

Imagine if, once upon a time, you played for a club almost 300 times around the dawn of professionalism, then coached it to second in the table, arguably laying some of the foundations which led to outstanding success a few years later. But by the time of that success, you had moved on, initially as Director of Rugby at Saracens, then spotting and developing talent for Northampton and coaching Russia to the 2011 World Cup finals.

In the eight years you have been away, your club has won a Premiership, then slithered, via a couple of flirtations with relegation, into the lower reaches of the table, occasionally reaching the dizzy heights of mid-table mediocrity. The long-standing Director of Rugby who delivered the big prize is long gone, taking many of the big names with him, and leaving his successor and one-time deputy with a near-impossible job. Further change brought in an abrasive New Zealander, who talked a good game, showed quite a few players the door, made a raft of new signings, fell out rather publicly with some of the senior players and parted company with the club after little more than six months in charge. One of your former teammates has been promoted from the Academy to Head Coach, and you have now come back as ‘Executive Director of Sport’ (we must be posh-I can’t think of anyone else who has one of those!). What thoughts go through your mind?

 Authority. You need to establish clearly your authority within the club. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Brewer episode, there’s already been one dressing room coup. Given the stories about your touchy-feely style from your time at Saracens, involving first team players painting toilets, how do you make sure there isn’t another? Well, perhaps you aren’t too disappointed when a couple of the big names tell you they plan to move on, and perhaps you don’t try too hard, or indeed at all, to keep them. Others, well maybe they have to sweat a bit over the start of contract negotiations, and maybe the contract you offer will be a bit less lucrative than they are anticipating? You also seek your players, men who you believe will help take the club where you want it to go.

You certainly don’t establish authority by being one of the lads- you need to maintain some distance so that you can make the decisions which you believe are right for the club, whether that’s choosing who to bring in, or who to let go. That’s what the Head Coach is for- he can be the buffer between you and the players. If they moan about you to him, are you really bothered? He can judge their mood and be your finger on the squad’s pulse.

Recruitment. You need to build a squad to deliver your vision of the club. We’ve tried different approaches and in recent years seem in particular to have failed to make best use of a number of expensive ‘names’. They’ve lost form, struggled with injuries, not been well-suited to our style of play, or been away for long periods on international duty- maybe in some cases more than one of the above. While the academy may have been neglected in the past, it’s nevertheless produced some outstanding prospects and has had more attention in the last year or two, so perhaps it’ll be more of a production line for talent again. As we have offered little in terms of playing success, maybe we have had to pay over the odds for some of these players, leading to a thin squad and an inability to cope well with absences and injuries. Particularly in a World Cup year, you have to ask whether a bunch of current internationals, who’ll be away for a large part of the season, will be affordable.

If you decide they aren’t, then what do you do? Well, you recruit players who’ll be available and desperate to play, whether they are up-and-coming talent, nearly-internationals, hungry players from the far corners of the world, battle-hardened veterans, or established AP players who currently aren’t getting game time. You’ll need a blend of all these to give you strength in depth, the nous to win a tight game and, looking forward a few years, continuity in the squad. Once you have stability and improving performances, then maybe you can offer top half finishes and Heineken rugby, and start to attract the big names more readily if you want to.

So I think that’s what Steve Diamond’s strategy is all about.  It’s about showing that he’s the boss, and building a team in his own image, hard-nosed, die-for-the-shirt players, not fancy Dans or prima donnas. It’s not without risk, particularly at the moment, because we are far from sure of Premiership rugby next season. As he launches major change, yet again, and current players realise they aren’t part of our future or reveal that we aren’t part of theirs, we are nevertheless dependent on them continuing to perform for us, even though they know that our paths will shortly diverge. We need to keep things together for a while yet, particularly in what could be a season-defining match against Leeds in two weeks time. There’s a high price for failure and success will depend a lot on the man management skills of Dimes and Big Red. With Saints doing us a favour and beating Leeds today, we are under less pressure than we might be but, in the best traditions of soap operas, I fully expect more twists and turns before it all finally sorts itself out.