By Roth Admin
December 4 2003

Steph Nel the newly appointed Director of rugby for Rotherham Titans outlined a new management structure for the club. Nel called the changes re-structuring, as no one has lost their jobs. Nel has assessed the players and management and wants to give them clearly defined roles. Nel went on to say… “The players will be re-assessed at the end of January and decisions will be made then. The current management structure will be reviewed at the end of May. It’s always difficult to come in and hire and fire and I didn’t think that was the right thing and the owner didn’t want that. So what we’ve done is re-structured.”

Steph Nel confirmed the following positions within the management team.

Director of Rugby: Steph Nel

Team Manager/ Assistant Coach: Geoff Wappett

Consultant: Alan Zondagh (For the rest of the season)

Player/Coach: Mike Umaga

U21/Academy Coach: Mike Schmid

Rugby Administrator: Jim Kilfoyle

Physio: Claire Byrne

Fitness Coach: Simon Reynes

Steph Nel then went on to field questions from the press. When asked what was his initial impression of Rotherham, he replied, “Rotherham have struggled to adapt to the pace and level of Premiership rugby. There’s a vast difference between Division 1 and the Premiership. Since my time in Europe which started in 2000, the Premiership has improved rapidly. The style of rugby is far more open and players are backing themselves. And the Premiership is the best club competition in world rugby.”

Steph describe the challenge as, “the biggest challenge of his life and if it wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have accepted the job.”

Will he still be here next season if Rotherham are playing National 1 rugby? – “That’s ultimately for the board of directors to decide. They’ve asked me to come up with an 18 month plan, which I handed to the owner yesterday. And you know we’re obviously going to go for the lotto ticket and try and survive in the Premiership, if that doesn’t happen – we go down. We’ll have to come straight back again with a good plan. That’s what Mike (Yarlett) wanted me to work on and I handed him the plan yesterday and he was happy with that.”

Steph spoke about the difficulty of recruitment in a World Cup year. “Rotherham found it incredibly difficult to scout, the young players and academy players knew they were going to get their opportunity while the internationals were away. What happens is that clubs hang on to a number of players, more so than in any other year and therefore Rotherham missed out.”

How do you go about breaking the “yo-yo” cycle of promotion and relegation? – “The key word is planning. Assess the Premiership and know what’s happening in the Premiership. Take Leeds for example they were given a 2nd chance and they were able to build and they anticipated what was going to happen and look at where Leeds are now. You need to know what’s happening in the Premiership.”

In National Division 1, how do you go about assembling a squad capable of competing in the Premiership? – “When you are looking at your squad if you can get 25% of them already good enough to play Premiership and another 25% of young players with the potential of playing Premiership and International, then that’s a good start and that’s what we’ll be looking at. In Division 1 you might not necessary attract players of the standard of the Premiership, but what you can do is get players with the potential to play Premiership, providing they’re given the right opportunity and the right infrastructure to develop and be fast tracked in a years time.”

With regard to bringing in new players, Nel spoke about the number of registered players in the Premiership being limited to 33. He explained that you can de-register a player and register a new one in his place, but once a player has been de-registered, that player can’t play again that season for that club. As a result Nel suggested at the end of January some players may go out on loan.

Steph finished by talking about how much he is relishing the challenge and how he wants to implement a good work ethic and put a structure in place that will help Rotherham Titans to become a competitive team in the best club rugby competition in world rugby.