Guinness Premiership final: Dark cloud shows his sunny side
Dean Ryan has a reputation for caution, but can't help feeling optimistic as he prepares his exciting young Gloucester side to take on Leicester tomorrow. Chris Hewett talked to him
Published: 11 May 2007
The Gloucester coach oversees a training session
When Dean Ryan describes himself as one of the "dark clouds" in the rugby firmament, precious few people feel a burning desire to disagree with him - least of all those poor souls who found themselves on the rough end of his wrathful performances as a forward of undoubted international class, or the world-weary Twickenham disciplinarians charged with taking him to task for the occasional verbal outbursts that have marked his years as a gifted and increasingly successful coach. As one referee famously remarked towards the end of Ryan's playing career: "Everyone needs a challenge in life, and he's mine."
But what do we have here, pray? Why, it's a sanguine Ryan - a Ryan who, contrary to his most basic instincts, finds himself looking on the bright side. "I can't help it at the moment," he said, casting an eye over tomorrow's Guinness Premiership final at Twickenham, in which his exhilarating Gloucester side will take on the grizzled old hard-heads of Leicester. "I've been around this game long enough to know there's always a sheer drop just around the corner. Yet whenever this group of players fall off the cliff face, as they have on a number of occasions this season, they're halfway back up almost before they hit the floor. Their spirit of optimism is irresistible."
The coach will not be quite as close as he would like to the well-spring of that optimism tomorrow, owing to the fact that the Rugby Football Union slapped a 13-week ban on him for giving one of their elite referees, Rob Debney, some double-barrelled criticism after a narrow defeat at Saracens in February. Ryan is by no means cavalier about a suspension that bars him from the dressing room and touch-line areas on match days - he took the punishment personally at the time and it pains him still - but he is not one of life's bellyachers. He said what he said knowing full well where his words might lead him, and accepts his lot.
Anyway, the real work is done away from the public eye, at a quiet training base in Hartpury, a village a few miles out of town on the picturesque road that stretches towards the Malverns. It is there that the likes of Andy Hazell and Peter Buxton - teak-tough loose forwards described by Ryan as the "glue" of the team - mix with the bright young things of the academy. Every Premiership club runs an academy, but few of them perform as well as the Gloucester version. Ryan Lamb, Anthony Allen, Olly Morgan, Jack Adams, Mark Foster and Luke Narraway? With investment returns like these, the club should move to Wall Street.
"It's why I call myself the 'dark cloud'," Ryan explained. "Someone has to act as a reality check, because these are young players who are only just beginning to understand themselves. We exist in a genuine rugby environment here - playing and coaching in Gloucester, where everyone has a serious interest in the game, is not unlike working in Welsh rugby or New Zealand rugby. It sounds great and it is in many ways, but it can be a double-edged sword.
"We have a passionate support and it can help enormously, but the playing group has to be right if we're to get the full benefit of all that passion. If the group isn't right, huge public interest can hinder progress. Why? Because unless the correct dynamics are in place, players can easily get carried away with their own celebrity, start strutting around the place like they're God's gift and allow their view of what is right to become polluted. We won't allow the superstar thing to encroach on our business here. Leicester take the same attitude, and they're right.
"Having said all that, I do believe we have a good deal going for us at the moment. Time and again this season - the difficult games against Leinster and Agen in the Heineken Cup were obvious examples - the younger players found themselves experiencing things they had not previously come across, yet absorbed the lessons of those experiences incredibly quickly. The speed of their learning really surprised me. If they've struggled to cope in a new environment at times, they've struggled only the once. When they've gone on to play a game of equivalent stature, they've generally worked out a way to win it."
Ryan has performed some delicate tasks this season. Lamb, his 20-year-old outside-half, endured a rough afternoon against an Agen side inspired by the extraordinary Fijian wing Rupeni Caucaunibuca and saw his game fall apart, while Allen, a fellow midfielder four months the younger, found himself short of confidence after running into the All Blacks on his England debut before Christmas. That both players are in the shape of their lives now, when it really matters to Gloucester, is a feather in the coach's cap.
"There has never been any question of Ryan's belief in his own ability, but he was producing terrific performances without having any true understanding of why things were happening the way they were," he said. "Before Agen, he'd win us matches without thinking about it. After Agen, I thought: 'Now things have gone wrong for him, we can help.' Ryan knows much more about himself as a result of the work we put in at that time.
"Anthony was a slightly different case. He was in good form when he left us to play for England and was in poor form when he got back. We knew there were deficiencies in his game - deficiencies that had been hidden to a degree at Premiership level, but were very likely to be exposed in a Test match. The important thing was to get up close to him and provide some reassurance. I think he's been right back to his best recently."
By common consent, however, Ryan's master stroke had nothing to do with the brat pack element. Late last season, he secured the services of the Italian second-row forward and captain Marco Bortolami. When Bortolami turned up for training in mid-summer, Ryan quickly decided he should lead Gloucester as well. It was a bold move. Bortolami would certainly be worth his place in the starting line-up - he was, after all, one of the best half-dozen locks in world rugby - but the notion of a continental European calling the shots in front of the troglodytes huddled together in the Kingsholm Shed was an interesting one, to say the least.
"Actually, it was one of the easier decisions," said the coach, shunning due credit for one of the campaign's more enlightened pieces of judgement. "I took the view from the start that he'd be a leader in the team, and while I'd always been wary of putting someone into the role before they'd earned their stripes, his contribution in pre-season left me in no doubt as to what I should do. We went on a team-building trip and, over a few beers, I told him my thinking. He was very cautious, worried about overstepping the mark, but I said: 'Marco, you're already doing the job without realising it. Look at the way the players are responding to you.'
"He has a rare gift for leadership - so rare, in fact, that I've seen only three or four players like him. Martin Johnson had the gift of it, as did Lawrence Dallaglio in his pomp. Basically, most people like to follow. It's true in rugby, just as it's true in life. Natural leaders are few and far between."
Under Ryan and his chief coaching aide, the former Scotland scrum-half Bryan Redpath, the West Countrymen have reinvented themselves as a new-age act. When Ryan was glorying in his own ruthlessness as a player - he turned out for Saracens and Wasps before joining Rob Andrew's professional revolution at Newcastle - he knew precisely what he would get on his visits to Kingsholm: a powerful, pug-ugly forward pack; a pain-in-the-arse scrum-half; centres who ran straight and tackled like a ton of bricks; a stand-off who could kick miles; and a full-back who could kick even further. These days, Gloucester crave space and movement. At times, they make the Marinsky Ballet look leaden-footed.
"In the Premiership as it is now, you can't get away with a one-dimensional, forward-driven game," Ryan said. "Balance is the thing, and I think we're developing it. There again, our core values are still in place. Gloucester people know their rugby: they expect their teams to work hard, to bust their backsides for the full 80 minutes every time they pull on the shirt, to knock seven bells out of anyone who comes near. I have no argument with any of that. When I pick a team now, the tight-head prop and the open-side flanker are still the critical calls. But we've added a lot to what we do and as things stand, I think we're good value."
Are they good enough to breeze past Leicester, though? Hard as it is for traditionalists to swallow, a team can lose the Premiership despite winning the league, as Gloucester did by a point 13 days ago. (Five seasons ago, they finished top by 15 points and still ended up with naff-all). "To beat Leicester, you have to go toe to toe," Ryan said. "There is no escaping it, no other way. If you don't stand up to them in the forward contest, you can forget it. It will be another of those occasions when the younger players in the team find themselves in a situation outside their experience. How will they cope? It depends on how much they've learned over the season. They've learned fast. Now, we'll find out if they've learned enough."
Also in this section
- Australia 29 Wales 23: Hoiles' late try lets Australia off hook
- Tim Glover: Balshaw blow adds to sense of futility
- Jonathan Davies: After a kicking from the press, Wales should not have kicked away a win
- South African viewpoint: Home side's waltz interrupted by Walsh
- South Africa 58 England 10: England the sick men of Africa
