FROM THE BLINDSIDE:Once the new Munster coach has Foley pulling for him the rest will follow. There can't be any divide because players will pick up on it
IN THE middle of reading about Munster’s new coach Rob Penney the other day, I noticed an odd little fact. Both his current club Canterbury and his soon-to-be new one Munster were founded in the same year, 1879. That’s 133 years apiece of new faces and old faces, victories and defeats, fights and make-ups, all leading to where we will be in two months’ time with a guy travelling half the planet to leave one club for the other.
There’s a lot of history behind all of us.
Penney’s first job when he gets here will be to form a relationship with Anthony Foley. That’s the most important thing he will do in the early days of his time with Munster. He needs to appoint a manager and a backs coach as well but he has to win over Foley from the start.
He needs him onside first and foremost because once he has Foley pulling for him the rest will obviously follow. There can’t be any divide between them because players will pick up on it straight away.
But there’s a bit more to it than that. Foley will obviously be disappointed not to have got the job himself. I personally think he’s better off as the number two just for the moment because there’s a difficult period coming up for Munster and if former England coach Martin Johnson’s demise told us anything, it’s that going into a really high-pressure job at a difficult time isn’t ideal for a new coach starting out.
Johnson’s reputation has taken a big hit as a result and I wouldn’t like the same happen to Anthony.
But I know he wanted it and with the best will in the world, it would take anybody a bit of time to get over the disappointment of not being given a shot. Foley will move on quickly and will give Penney all the help he needs – it was no surprise to me when I heard him say last week that he was pretty humbled by Foley’s attitude to the whole situation the first time he talked to him. But it will be up to the new man to forge that alliance between the pair of them and to start forming relationships with the players through Foley.
A new coach puts everyone on their toes. The first day he arrives, you’ll hardly be able to find a parking space at Munster’s training ground for the amount of guys who will be getting there early. If you’re a player, you will be trying to get his attention as quickly as possible. It will still only be pre-season at that stage but right off the bat you don’t want to be doing anything stupid or negative to create a bad first impression.
Meanwhile, even as they’re trying to impress the new guy, players will be sizing him up as well. What’s he like? Where’s he coming from? Does he favour one type of player or personality over another?
But most of all, how honest is he? If you asked every player in the world the one thing they would look for in a coach above all else, I’d say honesty and integrity would top most lists.
A coach can be innovative, he can be a great motivator, he can know the game inside out and back to front. But if players think he isn’t 100 per cent straight-up and honest in his dealings with them, none of the rest will matter.
When it comes down to it, players want to play. Everything else in their lives just feeds into that need for game-time. The coach is a million different things to a player – game analyst, facilitator, tone-setter – but most of all he’s the guy who picks the team. If you’ve been dropped or if you’re being passed over for somebody else on a consistent basis, the coach needs to give you an honest reason why it’s happening.
Penney is coming in to take charge of a group of 35-40 players so on a weekly basis he’s going to be disappointing more players than he’ll be making happy. It’s the same in any coaching job and the guys who rise to the top are the ones who give it to the players straight.
I was never able to accept being left off a team but as long as I didn’t go away feeling a coach was messing me about, I was willing to do everything I could for him. I always saw the coach as being there to be impressed, as someone for me to show as much passion and hunger as I could to. The way I saw it, he was the facilitator of my hopes and dreams and I needed him to be someone I could put my trust in.
I needed to know that there was always a way into the team if I wasn’t on it. If a coach told me that he decided to go with somebody else but here are the things I need to work on, I would still be disappointed but I’d go away and do what he said. But if he told me one thing and then a few days later one of the other coaches told me something else, that would drive me mad. It would drive any player mad.
The doubt in your mind makes you start wondering if they’re taking you seriously at all. Everyone thinks they should be playing and everyone gives out about the coach when they’re not but as long as the players have a level of certainty as to the reasons, they will wear it.
Mixed messages are the worst thing any coaching ticket can send out, which is why Penney’s relationship with Foley is going to be so important.
His next most vital relationship will be with the senior players. With younger guys, a new coach has to help them find their way in the game. He has to improve their skills, build up their mentality, possibly mentor them through an important phase in their career. The senior guys don’t care about any of that. They just want to win.
You only have to look at Chelsea in the Premier League to see what happens when you don’t get the senior players in your camp from the off. Andre Villas-Boas tried to make too many changes too quickly, results went against them and senior players started exerting their influence in the background. That kind of thing will marginalise a new coach very quickly, especially if the team is losing.
It doesn’t matter what sport you’re playing, the coach has to have a core of experienced, influential guys in the team who are pulling in the same direction as him. Chelsea have won the FA Cup and are in the Champions League final now and their best players since Villas-Boas left have been Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba. Interim manager Roberto Di Matteo very quickly got them back in the team and got them playing for him and success has followed. It isn’t always that simple but a lot of the time it is.
Penney met Paul O’Connell, Ronan O’Gara and Doug Howlett when he was over here and said he came away impressed with their desire to win more trophies. I’d nearly be surprised to find out they talked about anything else. When you get close to the end, all you give a damn about is getting more medals and winning more competitions. They don’t care who the coach is as long as that’s the outcome. So any new coach knows he needs to get them onside from the start.
Once Penney has Foley and the senior players driving his agenda, he can get on with the real work of reviving the province’s fortunes. Munster are in a dicey enough place at the moment. All the positivity that came with winning six pool games in the Heineken Cup went out the window with the defeat to Ulster and there will be pressure coming from the fans right from the start of the season. It’s a massive job.
Munster have done their homework in bringing him in. The easiest thing in the world would have been to give the job to Foley in the knowledge that the Munster public would give him plenty of leeway from the start. But they decided against it, leading to the situation now where the only top-rank Irish coach in the provinces next season will be Eric Elwood.
Although I do think Penney was probably the right appointment, you have to wonder what the future holds for young Irish coaches. Bernard Jackman is packing up his family to move to Grenoble next season, Michael Bradley and Mark McCall are all making their mark outside the country.
We have up-and-coming Irish coaches in the Ulster Bank League like Peter Smith and Mike Prendergast but what’s the next step for them? Most likely a few years abroad before they’re ever considered for a top job here. Even a top-class experienced coach like Eddie O’Sullivan struggles to get considered for the big jobs at home.
It’s sad but that’s the reality of the situation.
