Over the last month or so there have been a number of people talking down Dean Ryan’s Worcester. Now while nobody doubts Ryan’s talent, quite a few people have been challenging how long the board at the club will stick with it. Notably Ryan’s former colleagues at SKY haven’t been very supportive.
Now I like Ryan for a number of reasons, and not just because he was my first club captain when I joined Wasps (not that he would remember). In a coaching capacity Ryan’s ability to eloquently explain the technical aspects of the game and articulate why things are not working and why they are, has always impressed me. SKY without Ryan is a real damp squib without that ability.
What Ryan achieved at Gloucester during his tenure really helped transform the under-performing club into a giant of the English game and in affect set up the platform for who they are becoming again.
In taking up the mantle at Worcester, Ryan has made it quite clear what he is there to do and that it won’t happen in a season, and that it is a 3 year plus transformation. He has talked quite clearly that if they need to go down to bring the club back in the shape it needs to be in then so be it. I can’t help thinking that is ability to recruit quality players would be made easier by staying in the Premiership, but as both Harlequins and Northampton have shown, and even Exeter for that matter, developing outside of the gaze of the top flight can often work wonders.
But I can’t help thinking that Ryan has picked up a poison chalice; the number of coaches that have been a Worcester and failed is starting to look quite disconcerting. What Ryan has inherited is a squad of players that are not necessarily up to the job at the top level and has been hampered in his ability to change the squad because of the long term contracts some of these players on. Don’t be surprised that if the club and Ryan stay the course there will be a lot of players leaving through the back door and quite a few probably well researched unknowns arriving through the front.
The second challenge that Ryan has had is that the players he has inherited are only suited to a particular game plan that is the hallmark of Richard Hill (scrum half not flanker). What that has meant is Ryan has probably spent more time educating players how to play a different game, whilst teaching them some of the core skills they hadn’t used for quite some time. He has had to work on their technique and probably their ability to read what is in front of them as well.
And he has had to do all that with the Premiership as a backdrop, where unfortunately his team has struggled. So the challenge of dealing with the mental pressures of trying to dig yourself out of the relegation spot, weighs them down. And yet those who have been watching in the last couple of weeks might just have noticed that the team appears to be getting stronger and week on week are starting to look a tougher proposition. The old adage that a win for the team would work wonders for their confidence couldn’t be truer that at Worcester right now.
Whatever the outcome Worcester need to stick with Ryan, he is by far and away the best coach they have had in a very long time and he will get it right, the question is whether it will be in time to save this season. He is the best chance Cecil Duckworth has of breaking out of their current dilemma of being too good for the Championship but not quite good enough for the Premiership.
On the link below is a very good, frank interview with Ryan talking about the decision to go back into coaching at Worcester.
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