Coach has become frustrating story that's lost the plot

John Beattie

I’VE spoken to enough players and administrators to know that there is a damaging rift within our game at the highest level between the coaches from overseas and our own, and a lack of trust and communication between those brought in to take charge and the Scots who have been, in a way, overlooked. I have even been told that the Scottish players have been querying game plans suggested by the coaches.

Matt Williams is a decent man, and I like him, but he has lost key players, lost the press, and lost too many games, and he and his team should be replaced. It is not a question of money, as Williams deserves to be paid the balance of his contract, and the same should be done for his support staff. As coaches we have all lost the players at times, and when we do we get shot.

And I can’t take one more press conference where he is savaged, and I can’t take one more message that the players aren’t really with him. I believe the attacks on him have been too personal, but he has said that he has become the story, and that is very damaging. The more it is prolonged, the worse it will get.

Inherent in what I say is that I understand that most coaches think they can do a better job than whoever has been put in charge of a team they think they should be coaching. Coaches bite more backs than Paris Hilton in a steamy video.

You will always find players, too, who don’t rate their coaches, and there will be players in each of our three professional teams who don’t rate those in charge. You will even hear that the English players decided they would take charge of the team in the week before their World Cup final, marginalising Sir Clive.

But it is time to sort our problems because we have a spell without major rugby for the international side, and no summer tour. And rather than do the Scottish thing - sand, head and hide spring to mind - it’s time for a rethink.

Rugby isn’t rocket science. Maybe our conditioning programmes have been wrong, as Matt Williams has suggested, but that is accusing good men like Ken McEwan at Edinburgh of being negligent when I think that his fitness training has been key to Edinburgh’s success.

Glasgow’s Mark Bitcom is also well respected. But if I wanted to develop a fitness programme for rugby, I would knock on the door of the Scottish Institute of Sport.

Then we talk about individual skills, defensive patterns and the plethora of minute pieces of skill players need to become internationalists, and we should be designing a uniquely-Scottish system of training - and play to suit our players. Let Scottish people find and implement systems. Why don’t we trust ourselves?

We must look at our pro- team and age-grade coaches to see who might be promoted to the national side. I think we are talking of the backs being coached by Frank Hadden, Sean Lineen and Alan Tait, and the forwards by a blend from Peter Wright, Iain Paxton, Todd Blackadder, Shade Munro and Hugh Campbell. A player should think: "He’s been there and done that. I respect the coach."

And the SRU has to look at a more organised semi-pro structure to bring Scottish coaches through the club system, because that is our weakness. Matt Williams has been right to point out our faults and lack of skills. But it’s up to us to sort it out now.

A foreign coach must not become the story. That is what it has come down to, and I think the cause is lost.

This article was posted on 21-Mar-2005, 08:17 by Hugh Barrow.