At last month’s Premiership launch the Saracens director of rugby, Mark McCall, remarked on the number of new faces among his contemporaries. “You keep worrying that when the 12 of you line up for the photograph, how many of you are still going to be there at the end? I’ve got a funny feeling that everyone will be back next year.” He was proved wrong less than a week into the new season.
Never has the position of director of rugby, or head coach, been more precarious considering last season’s bottom four clubs all changed theirs at varying parts of the campaign and Matt O’Connor was sacked by Leicester after only one match of the new Premiership season.
Leicester sack head coach Matt O’Connor after first match of the season
The threat of relegation is playing its part. Plenty will argue that the Tigers are “too good” to go down but Bristol’s wealth and their ability to plan in advance, without any Championship play-offs to trip them up, mean that as Sale’s director of rugby, Steve Diamond, said last week, “the competition is at a different level” this season. The majority of club owners may want to pull the drawbridge up but relegation remains a live threat for the time being, and for more of them than ever this season with no cannon fodder propping up the rest.
Saracens and Exeter may be out on their own at the top of the league but there are not vast differences between the other 10 teams. Take Wasps, Leicester’s opposition on Sunday at the Ricoh Arena. Dai Young is the third longest-serving director of rugby in the Premiership, having taken over at Wasps in 2011. He signed a long-term contract in January but the fear of the axe is never far away and he has great sympathy for O’Connor, whom he would have expected to be pitting his wits against. “We all feel it because there are only 12 of us,” he said. “You always think, ‘That’s one step closer…!’. We all feel it because we’re all human beings and we’ve all got families. The game moves on pretty quickly – within three or four days you’re pretty much forgotten. It is part of the job but also a sign of the times. It doesn’t mean you have to like it.
“People don’t see that behind the directors of rugby there are families; wives and kids. Especially someone like Matt – he has moved over from Australia and now he has to move back. People don’t see that side of things. But we all realise it’s the job and if things don’t go right, you’re under pressure. We all know we’re under pressure and we have to perform. I signed a long-term contract to stay here but it’s only ever one season really. If you get it wrong, you’re gone, simple as that. You are always under pressure.”
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Young also questions why assistant coaches often benefit when a director of rugby or head coach is let go – in Leicester’s case, Geordan Murphy, who is in charge on an interim basis. “Unfortunately in this game, it is easier to get rid of one guy than 40 players and 15 off-field staff,” added Young, who hands a first start to the New Zealand fly-half Lima Sopoaga. “So one guy is going to carry the can and inevitably it’s someone from your coaching staff who steps up and takes your job as well. I find that quite remarkable on occasions. Guys who you coach with who don’t get the results tend to step up and get your job.”
It would be a fool who bets on no more directors of rugby departing before the end of the season and, without a win in Bath’s opening two matches and having only just scraped into the Champions Cup position last term, Todd Blackadder is under increasing pressure. His side travel to Harlequins on Saturday while Diamond takes Sale, who welcome back Tom Curry, to Exeter, for whom Jack Nowell starts.
Elsewhere, Eddie Jones will be in attendance at Northampton to see Dylan Hartley make his first start of the season but Owen Farrell – who replaced him as captain on England’s summer tour of South Africa – misses out. Saracens said only that Farrell has suffered a “minor strain” without specifying where.