If we thought we had it tough........

By Joe 90
August 19 2010

Last season wasn't anything to write home about for us, but just down the road from Edgeley Park, Manchester Rugby Club suffered a truly torrid time. Joe Williams, better known to us as Joe90, looks at a club starting to bounce back, and talks to the woman at the centre of it all.

Manchester RC isn’t what you would ever call a fashionable Club. You’d be forgiven for thinking the chances of them ever grabbing the headlines would be remote. Still, during the course of the last season, the unfashionable Club from Grove Park managed to make the back pages in not only the local rags, but also the nationals. Admittedly, the circumstances were unusual to say the very least: managed by a female Director of Rugby, Elaine Vassie, and relegated to National Division 2 after a dismal season in which it failed to register a single victory.

It’s fair to say that given the circumstances in which the Club found itself, the results didn’t exactly come as a great surprise. Few teams could come through a season unscathed when faced with an 85 percent funding cut from its governing body and only 4 senior players available for selection. Manchester Rugby led the way to some extent, and now the rest of the country it seems is following: spending cuts, job losses and economic prudence as yesterday’s man ‘Gordon’ used to call it.

It all sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it, in these gloomy economic times? The question is though, do you simply accept your lot when the cupboard’s bare and make do and mend, or do you look for a more radical solution? The answer in Manchester Rugby’s case is most definitely the latter. Necessity can be, and invariably is, the mother of reinvention. Things are changing in Cheadle Hulme and the future is starting to look just that little bit brighter.

At the hub of this reinvention is Elaine Vassie, an RFU Community Coach by day and a fiercely determined and driven individual. First impressions can sometimes be misleading, but in her case you are left in no doubt that she is completely focused on the job in hand. It’s equally clear that the headline grabbing tag of a ‘woman in a man’s world’ is wearing just a little thin. She wants to move on and be judged by what she manages to achieve, not by the situation she found herself inadvertently placed in. She has clear ideas about what she wants to achieve at the Club and how these changes should be delivered. It’s all about community – building and developing the assets the Club has access to and establishing it as an essential part of the community it serves. The true spirit of rugby is all about bonding, bringing together youngsters and teaching and encouraging them to function as a loyal, tight-knit unit. Unlike professional rugby, sport at the grass roots level is all about building this bond, not the brand.

Her promotion to Director of Rugby was not exactly conventional in the normal sense of the word. She arrived at Grove Park in 2009 as a Fitness and Development Assistant to then Director, Paul Reid. Reid unfortunately had to stand down from the role due to his son’s illness and she found herself catapulted into the top job for the away game to Redruth in what turned out to be a bit of a baptism of fire. She undoubtedly had the backing of everyone at the Club and, most importantly, the players, but probably had little idea of the enormity of the task she was about to take on at the time, nor the headlines her promotion would stir. Her approach to this promotion was, however, pragmatic and measured.

“It was just one of those cases where you just have to get on with it. Because of the situation at the Club and the lack of players available, we had many things to do and achieve, so it was important to forget about the circumstances and just get on with it. It was only really after that you started to think about it and what had just happened. It was similar in a way to the feeling we all had at the end of the season- right ok, that’s over.  Forget the results -what have we achieved so far and how can we change things?”

Achievement and change are what drive her and the team on. As a former player and a coach she was focused on what she believed had to be attained. The results per se weren’t as important as others seemed to think, as for Vassie it was all part of a process and that first season was just the first step on the journey.

“I suppose I’ve always looked at Manchester as a massive opportunity: that doesn’t mean to say I underestimated the size of the task at hand, but then again, nothing’s worth doing unless it’s worth doing! I guess the Redruth game was just the start of the process. What has always been important to me is where do we go from here? What can we work towards?”

What she and her coaching team had in mind was building this ‘community club.’ Success generally breeds further success. The foundations to this new approach had already been laid by both Allan Power, Head of Minis and Juniors, and Simon Ogden, Club Coaching Co-ordinator.  Together they’d managed to build an extraordinarily popular and successful Mini and Junior section, so much so that over 300 now turn up for Sunday training sessions. Everyone at the Club, from President Andrew Bridgman down, realised that in order to move on and improve and harness the enthusiasm of these young players there had to be a goal for them to aim for and some chance for progression through the ranks. Money or no money, the Club had to keep going for the sake of these youngsters.

“We had to stay in business for the sake of the kids. We’ve got a very strong Junior section and for there to be nothing for them to aim towards would be a tremendous loss, not just to the Club, but also the community.”

The idea of building a community club has its roots firmly in her background. As well as playing for 7 years and coaching for 5, Vassie is, as already mentioned, a community rugby development coach. Although her ultimate goal may well lie in coach development within the RFU structure, she is clearly passionate about building the Club from the bottom up and developing links within the local area the Club serves.

“I think it’s all about building on the experiences people have, and if your experience is a positive one, then I think you’re more likely to want to go back. It’s just a basic retention strategy really. If we can make sure that the whole level of service, the coaching and the training, is a positive one there’s very little reason to leave, and if you do leave, you’ve got something to measure against what you’ve had before. I think this is where the M & Js do it well and why they’re booming. It all comes down to the same thing really. This is what our Club’s about – a community-based club that serves the community. If we make players’ experiences favourable then things can only get better.”

The experience during the last season may not have been that ‘favourable’ in the traditional sense, but it was important in creating and nurturing the sort of team spirit that Vassie and her team viewed as essential if the Club was to stand any chance of survival. No team can ever move forward or improve without this sense of cohesion, trust and loyalty.

“There aren’t many guys who will go through the experiences our guys went through last year individually or collectively as a team including the support staff, who weren’t affected by events and who didn’t buy into the idea of loyalty and mutual trust. It clearly wasn’t a normal scenario, nor one you’d really want a Club to find itself in, but at the same time this kind of cleared the decks and allowed us to focus on what we wanted to achieve as a Club. What are our real values and what do we want to build on in the longer term?”

“We started to talk about this kind of thing early on, maybe around January of last season. Asking ourselves the question, what are we building for and what we wanted to achieve? It was never just a question of trying to survive – if that was all we were working towards then personally I would view that as fairly worthless. If you want to move on and make a difference, it’s got to be about what we are aiming for in 2, 3, 4 or 5 years’ time. So for the guys who were there at the start and were the link in the whole story – you know from the depths of last season and survival to the new - we let them know what we were planning for the next few years. They’re really united, maybe more so than I’ve seen anywhere else.”

“If we can envelop any new guys who come into this kind of atmosphere, into the way of thinking here and the special type of atmosphere/bond we developed, then that can only support us moving forward again. By the same token if we can help a player move on then we will always try to help. We had a scrum half last year, Matty Bradley who came to us from Sedgley Seconds and was referred to us. He couldn’t get the game time so he came to us and travelled up from Hartbury for Saturday games. He had a great time last year and felt the whole experience really improved his game. He’s going to be playing for Stourbridge this season. That’s also very satisfying because if we can help players move on and up, we can be pleased with ourselves and pat them on the back and say – well done, you’ve worked for that and deserve it.”

‘Building the foundations’ and ‘building for the future’ are phrases that crop up time and time again, but without this emphasis it really is difficult to understand and appreciate how the Club is trying to, and to a large extent has managed to, turn the whole situation on its head and develop something positive from a set of circumstances where most people would only see the negative. Money, to a large extent is the problem, but it isn’t necessarily the solution. In all sports, particularly professional ones, there is a tendency to think that the solution to any problem lies in throwing enough money at it. However, you might be able to buy success, but unless the resource is inexhaustible there inevitably comes a time when the realisation dawns that that approach is unsustainable. Manchester Rugby discovered this early on and was fortunate in the sense that it was able to look to resolve its difficulties by alternative strategies – namely player development and referral recruitment.

 “A lot of clubs fell into the trap of trying to buy success. Not just Sale Sharks but nearer to home here at Manchester. For me overseeing something like that isn’t and never will be what coaching is about. That’s just about merely organising a team, if you can call it that, and facilitating a playing environment. Coaching for me is much more fundamental. The reason we have help from coaches like Briggsy [Neil Briggs] this season is that they can see we’ve got good raw material – players that we’ve built up through our own M & J and kids that we hope to attract or help to move on elsewhere. It’s a great opportunity for them to help develop these lads as players and once you’ve done that, then you can achieve success as a team. That to me is the way forward. Develop and nurture the talent you have available and improve, rather than buy in X and Y, slot them in there and the Grand Final comes together.”

“From a coaching point of view it gives you the chance to develop what strengths you have and work on areas where there isn’t that strength. From the playing point of view you get improvements and hopefully some satisfaction in what you’ve managed to achieve. Money would be useful, of course, but for the time whilst I’m here, we’d never go back to the type of thinking where you spend money to buy someone to fill a position to achieve success. Coaching is about development and improving what you have at your disposal.”

Manchester Rugby’s only tangible asset is Grove Park and that is actually subject to a covenant and can’t be sold. Add to this the fact that attendances are low which, given last season’s results, is hardly surprising and the ground itself could do with a lick of paint or two here and there. Money might not be the answer to all problems, but in all walks of life a little extra would never go amiss. Manchester Rugby however does not want to be tempted down the road trodden by many others and look for large cash injections, and would rather take a more measured and responsible approach to investment in the future, with young talent being the most important and valuable resource. Deals can and often do go awry: you only have to look to football to see that even larger clubs aren’t immune from this economic downturn. Rugby, too, has suffered from over-reaching itself as the fortunes of Nottingham and Coventry Rugby Clubs prove.

“We’re certainly exploring all the options with that like everything else. You can’t just look at eggs in one basket, so let’s focus back on what we’re trying to achieve in the mid to long term because all these things are inter-related. We want to build on, and be known as, a community-based club so we’re looking at local businesses we can work with. What we have here is a massive membership base through the Minis and Juniors and their parents: they’re all local to this area. So from the viewpoint of a local business, working with us would make sense. We’re not looking to find someone to bankroll us or fund us through a massive sponsorship, we’re looking for smaller financial hits but based in and around our local community in which we all function.”

So, with a steady approach to future growth and an increasing reliance on what can be developed locally, what of the future? When Manchester go to the likes of Caldy and Jason Robinson’s Fylde this season, how will it fare and is Vassie confident of stability in National League 2?

“This year things are a little better as we’ve got roughly 30+ players at pre-season sessions, though some of those are Colts, but the encouraging thing is that we’ve had interest from people outside of the Club – you know players who are friends of players who played for us last season. That’s what encourages me because it very easy to look at the results last year and see the lack of points on the board, yet when you have players who’ve been here through that and others who’ve gone on to play at a higher level and they still are referring others down here because of the experiences they’ve had, then that’s definitely a tick in the box and tells me that we are going in the right direction and some of the things we’re trying to achieve must be working. It’s when people start to buy into what you’re trying to achieve as a Club that I get my satisfaction.”

“New players now are starting to look at the Club and have come down to see what’s happening, and start to think that there might be an opportunity from me here. Player referrals are the key for me – if you can make enough of an impression, then others will follow.”

Manchester Rugby has also been lucky enough to recruit Neil Briggs, the Sale Sharks hooker, onto its coaching staff this year. Vassie is hopeful not only that Briggsy will bring some new ideas and philosophies into the twice-weekly training sessions and pass on some of his experiences, but also that his introduction will be the first step towards a closer working relationship with the Club’s Premiership neighbours, along the lines of Esher/Harlequins and Blaydon/Newcastle Falcons. However, even the biggest clubs are feeling the pinch of recessionary pressure and are cutting their cloth accordingly, restructuring their academies and nurturing home-grown talent: reinvention it seems is the key for everyone.

“I know Pete [Anglesea] reasonably well and we have a good working relationship. If we have a player who we think might appreciate an opportunity to train at Sale and we think that Sale might be interested in having a look at them, then obviously we’d refer them. For it to be the other way round is slightly more complicated. There are financial implications in that we’d have to pay their wages, and we’re not in a situation to do that as it stands. We started talking to Briggsy in probably March this year about his development as a coach. It’s great to see that Mike [Brewer] is supportive of that especially as he’s keen on developing links within the community. Beyond that I’d like this relationship to develop further, but I think it’s now a question of Sale sorting the matter out: things need time to settle there with so many changes having happened. Once that’s happened it’s then up to Sale to sort out how they can work with/help local clubs. From what I’ve heard and what I’ve read in the press so far, things look more positive than it did say at this time last year.”

If you were to turn the clock back by a year, it’s difficult to imagine that Manchester’s fortunes would have turned so much. Things unquestionably looked bleak and for Elaine Vassie the series of defeats must have caused a lot of distress and more than a little worry. However, as she’s proved over the course of her year in charge, her pragmatic and can-do attitude would look to have begun to turn the situation around. Manchester Rugby Club is looking forward and now ploughing a furrow that you suspect will be followed by others. To use the current mantra, it’s always best if you can grow your own.

 

Joe Williams 2010