By Whaley Shark
March 15 2015

….and I’d just like to say ‘Thank You’. He’d already been a Sharks’ player for a couple of seasons when I first took up watching Sale, and he stayed around until the end of the 2004-5 season, when he signed off with a great performance at the Kassam Stadium in Oxford, as Sale beat Paul 27-3 in the European Challenge Cup Final.

He then moved to Gloucester, first as Backs Coach and, after Dean Ryan’s departure in summer 2009, he stepped up to Head Coach. His side were competitive in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons but he resigned shortly before the end of the 2012 season, then popped up at Sale as Director of Rugby, a move which caused much heartburn at Kingsholm.

His tenure as Director of Rugby at Sale was short-lived and hard going, as the side completely misfired in the 2012-13 season. By late October, we’d lost 7 from 7 in the Premiership, including defeats at home to our relegation rivals London Welsh and Worcester, and had scraped just two losing bonus points. A radical coaching restructuring saw him move to a coaching role, with Dimes taking over as Director of Rugby. Sale survived and have at least punched their weight in the last couple of seasons. And now he’s off to the other side of the Pennines, taking up the role of Head Coach at Yorkshire Carnegie. I wish him all the best.