RUGBY NEWS:IT WAS somehow appropriate that a huge thunderstorm should sweep across The Stoop yesterday afternoon as Conor O'Shea was introduced as the man to steer Harlequins towards calmer waters.
Harlequins have been trying all season to rinse away the stain of last year’s Bloodgate saga but the rumbling aftermath has still not quite disappeared. Results have been up and down and the departure of Dean Richards, by the club’s own admission, has had a depressing ripple effect.
Even the appointment of an affable Irishman cannot heal such self-inflicted wounds overnight and the announcement of the England wing David Strettle’s move to Saracens offered an instant test of his diplomatic skills. As he explained the salary cap reasons behind Strettle’s departure, it was easy to see why Harlequins’ chief executive, Mark Evans, hired the 39-year-old former Ireland full-back. Bright and enthusiastic, O’Shea is also itching to get back into the hurly-burly of the English Premiership after three years as the English Rugby Football Union’s academy director and a stint as national director at the English Institute of Sport.
One of the first people O’Shea phoned for advice was Richards, banned for three years for his part in the Bloodgate cover-up which also led to the departure of the club physiotherapist, Steph Brennan, the doctor, Wendy Chapman, and, ultimately, the chairman, Charles Jillings.
“It was an expensive cup of coffee it has to be said,” joked O’Shea. Interestingly, it was Richards who helped convince his successor he was joining the right club. “He’s still incredibly passionate about Harlequins and it was even more striking when I met him. He did an enormous amount for this club . . . he’s a legend of English rugby.”
O’Shea freely admits he and Richards – “I’m not him” – are different personalities. The former’s task as director of rugby, even so, is to build on Richards’s legacy and to help Harlequins, eighth in the table, take the much-needed leap into the post-Bloodgate era. Evans acknowledges it will not be easy. “You would be incredibly naive to think it will ever disappear. Things like that don’t . . . What happened took the wind out of our sails. I think it would have done any club. This is another staging post, that’s the best way of putting it.”
Having been chosen ahead of 11 other strong candidates, though, O’Shea is up for it, having spent a large chunk of his playing career at London Irish as player, captain, director of rugby and finally managing director. At the RFU he mentored many of the country’s most promising youngsters while at the EIS he was able to study the high-performance methods of, among others, cycling and hockey.
He is also less concerned about Harlequins’ recent past than the promise of a young, largely English-qualified squad who supplied five members of the England under-20 side who scored 47 points in France last week. “This is a squad which, in my opinion, is going to mature and fulfil it’s potential in the next couple of years.”
For now O’Shea is not prepared to reveal how much further his vision extends before he has presided over his first league game against Bath tomorrow – “It would be patronising and arrogant.” – but Evans is less reticent. “I would dearly love – and maybe it’s an unachievable goal – to get Harlequins into the elite group of European clubs, to be as big as Leinster, Munster, Leicester, Toulouse and Clermont. They are the only five in the top bracket, in my opinion.
“A lot of people were very sceptical about our plans 10 years ago but we’re not far off doing everything we said we’d do initially.”
It is also Evans’s wish for Harlequins to become self-financing, rather than remain among the many sporting clubs reliant on wealthy benefactors. “It must be quite uncomfortable to be Chelsea and thinking: ‘What happens if Roman Abramovich has a plane crash?’ Perish the thought, on a human level, but it’s not a comfortable position for any organisation.”
Hence the reason for Strettle’s release. “We knew we’d lose one established player,” said O’Shea, stressing Ugo Monye had turned down big money in France to remain at The Stoop.
"We put deadlines on offers and if they weren't across the line they couldn't stay. Before David signed for Saracens he knew he wasn't going to be here next season. We gave him our best offer but pulling a squad in for under £4 million (€4.5m) is a challenge." Guardian Service
