State of the Union 2007
By Harley Quin
January 2 2007
As the New Year dawned, Mark Evans once again kindly agreed to take the time to sit down with Harley Quin and discuss various issues pertinent to NEC Harlequins.
HQ: As we speak (just before the Newcastle game), the team lie in 8th place, with a 12 point gap to 12th and 7 points to make up on a Heineken Cup position. Crowds average over 10,000. That’s all pretty close to your expectations isn’t it?
ME: Yeah, I think that’s fair to say. If you’d asked me at the beginning of the year where did I think we’d be after 11 games, I suppose I’d hoped we’d win maybe 5. When we lost the Double Header I thought we could be in for a tough run, so that was quite a key one. I felt perhaps we had an opportunity away at Sale. We played very poorly. I thought we were the better team against Saracens by a distance, whereas I thought we were quite fortunate against Worcester, to be honest.
I was disappointed to lose two games against Bath in the Challenge Cup, because obviously in terms of Heineken Cup qualification, silverware and revenue - in terms of more games, the Challenge Cup later rounds can be quite important. I’m not saying we can’t qualify now, but we have to get 2 bonus points wins to do so and then go away in the quarter final. It’s not an easy route now.
On the crowd side, we are still growing that quicker than any other club in the Premiership, percentage wise, but it’s slightly under what we projected internally by a few hundred.
It’s interesting, our crowd doesn’t seem to fluctuate very much. Even today, New Year’s Day, which is traditionally a once a year crowd I don’t think it will be up much on what we would have expected to get against Newcastle on a normal Saturday afternoon at 3 o’clock.
We don’t vary very much. Our lowest crowd was the first game, Gloucester 9,400 and our highest is Northampton at 11,300. (Overall) we are sixth in the attendance league, compared to five years ago when we were 11th or 12th.
HQ: Would Heineken Cup qualification be a bit of a poisoned chalice this season – or would you expect next year’s squad to be strong enough to withstand the rigours of both major club competitions?
ME: I think we’d be alright, I really do. If you look at the number of people in the squad, it’s quite a bit bigger than it was the last two times we were in it.
HQ: Would you not agree, with the exception of the back row and the three quarters, when you take somebody out there is a perceivable drop off?
ME: I think there is a difference between ‘do you think the Heineken Cup would damage your Premiership performance’ - that’s the first stage. Then, the stage after that is having a chance of winning it and still coming in the top four of the Premiership. I think we could do the first. I don’t think it would put such a strain on our resources as the last two times we were in it.
I’m not saying for a minute that we have got two identical teams yet. You are quite right, there are areas with a lot of depth and there are areas where we’ve probably got less than we’d like. We are going to try and address that over time.
However, I do think we have got a lot more depth. It’s a bigger squad – we’re spending more money! It’s as simple as that.
HQ: Presumably there are plans for further strengthening?
ME: Yeah. I think so. The fundamentals of the business don’t change. When I arrived 6 years ago, I said: “Look, you need a big stadium, with a lot of fans and a strong youth development programme.”
In the long run, to be successful in this sport, the way it is structured, you have to have that - or you need a guy who is going to bankroll you. If you could have all four that would be great!
For us, you have to go with the three pronged approach. Get a big enough stadium, but not too big so you don’t rattle around in it. That’s extremely expensive so that puts some pressure on financially. Produce your own players. I think we have made some big strides in that area compared to 5-6 years ago, when we weren’t producing any. (With all due respect to Jim Evans, who just happened to be picked up because we played Thurrock in a Cup game as I recall!) What Tony Russ, Colin Osbourne and now Tony Diprose have done has made a big difference. That’s encouraging. I think we will hopefully now see a steady stream of home grown players, playing for Harlequins.
We put a back line out the other week and I think it went something like: Brown, Williams on one wing, Monye on the other, Jordan Turner-Hall, Adrian Jarvis. Five out of seven (backs). It still niggles away at me, but if you then add people like Nicky at scrum half, Chris Bell – who should be at outside centre, we have actually produced through our youth development programme some half decent players in the last five years. Also, there is something intangible about having a proportion of your squad who have grown up at the Club.
I looked at our squad this year and I think 30% were home grown. Although there is no real target, I think it’s realistic to say that give it another 5 years and I’d like to think that half the squad would be produced (from the Academy). That’s achievable.
The Academy, the stadium and the fan base. If you get those 3 things right, those are your long term building blocks. Your fundamentals, which you have to get right. The frustrating thing about the fundamentals are that none of them are a short term fix.
It takes time to grow a big crowd. I don’t mean for one big game, I mean every week. Building out the stadium is expensive and youth development is not something you can just turn on either. On our fundamentals, I think we are making some good progress.
HQ: Can you give us an update on the proposed new South Stand?
ME: Planning permission is in. I don’t expect there to be any problems. It wont start getting built until Jan 2008 at the earliest, for September 2008. At the moment, without any kind of partner (in terms of joint usage) it would be very hard to finance it. The planning permission holds for five years, so we’ll probably wait for a while.
Last time we built (the Lexus Stand) because we were right up against our capacity. This time we are not and it will take two, three years if we build our crowds organically - maybe less if the team were to significantly improve performance. The great “un-knowable” is: How many people would come to watch Harlequins if we were regularly a top four team? Nobody knows the answer to that.
Is there latent demand? Yes I think there probably is. Are there people out there who would say that they are Harlequins followers, but don’t come to many games? Yes, I think there probably are. How many of them are there? Don’t know.
HQ: Apart from the Quins Lotto venture, the partnership with Harlequins RL seems quite low profile at the moment. Are you both just getting on with your businesses?
ME: Yeah, we are. We are doing the Lotto thing, which just makes sense, because it would be silly for both codes to do that separately. It would be confusing and it’s not a huge project anyway. The rugby league have got a lot of expertise in it and we’ve got none. They did all the research…and actually it’s working alright.
But you’re right, other than that and giving advice to each other they get on with their thing and we get on with ours. It works fine.
HQ: What’s your take on the current Premier Rugby/RFU situation? Can you see an acceptable solution that both parties could/should live with or is the current situation going to just drag on and on?
ME: The irony of this is that most people on all sides of the game in this country, if you asked them, 95% would agree on the solution. We want a strong domestic league, (then) a strong European competition, (then) a strong International competition, followed by a tour, followed by a rest.
HQ: How many teams in the domestic competition?
ME: I know a lot of people who say 10, others 12. If you go much above 12 I think you run into problems with a) quality and b) finance – I don’t think it will generate more in TV value, which is based on the number of weekends not the number of matches.
So, if you assume you left it at 12 in the English Premiership, then had the European Competition, then the International competition, then you went on tour, I think virtually every single problem that we’ve got at the moment would pretty much disappear.
The real problem is not the number of games people play, it’s when players are going away, coming back, going away, coming back. I say that on the International side and the club side. If we could just separate the seasons, block it, that would be fine.
You would get virtual unanimity about that. I can’t see anybody yet who can find a way to move us from where we are now to that, because you are not master of your own destiny. So many of the competitions are cross border. England might decide they want to do that, but they can’t shift the international games without getting the other 5 countries to agree. You can’t move the Heineken Cup without getting another 5 countries’ clubs or unions to agree.
So you have this real problem then of yes, this is what the English structure should look like, but how do you get there? I don’t think the solution is hard to identify, but it’s extra-ordinarily difficult to get there.
HQ: Is ring fencing in some form inevitable?
ME: Funnily enough, I don’t think the clubs are as obsessed with it as they were. That might have something to do with our experience. Interestingly enough, my argument for ring-fencing has always been as part of a package to make the sport bigger.
I’d have a draft system, a ring fence, a collective bargaining agreement, a completely equal share of centrally generated revenues.
It’s harder to grow rugby at international level, because it’s very hard to get countries up to the level and professionalism has made that gap bigger. The big have got bigger, the strong have got stronger. The big challenge for the IRB is: can you get two or three countries up to the required level? Of course, the countries that are already there don’t want to really help!
If you look at the signs, the real potential for growth is in the non international game. It’s easier to get clubs and regions up and running in areas where rugby is already strong.
I would always have ring fencing as a way of actually growing the sport in England, as quickly as you could. Maybe you would get there anyway, but I think it will take you twice as long. I’d like to get there in half the time! I’d like the sport to be huge because I think it’s just a brilliant, brilliant sport to play and to watch. It’s got such great values to it.
If you want rugby to just be a little marginal sport then you may as well keep relegation because it is quite exciting, but I actually don’t and that’s why I’ve always been against it (relegation).
HQ: Looking at the RFU situation from a Harlequin perspective, has the Dean Richards issue caused any problems? It seemed to coincide with a four game losing streak.
ME: I suppose you would have to ask the players - and I have asked one or two of them, and unsurprisingly they said “No, no, no, it doesn’t affect us at all”, but how do you know? Sometimes these things are coincidental.
HQ: Is it something that is in the rear view mirror now, or is it still on the horizon?
ME: When I recruited Dean, I was pretty aware that if he were successful –and I’ve every confidence that he will be – then that would almost certainly attract interest, but that’s true of any club if you are successful and you have an English coach. That just comes with the territory really.
HQ: I’m thinking about the recruitment next summer.
ME: Yeah. Its not going to happen now….despite some very strange press things just before Christmas, which I put down to the fact that there wasn’t any news about!
I’m sure they’d made a decision earlier in the year to stick with Andy Robinson, it was only the crowd reaction at Twickenham that forced them into a series of actions they didn’t want to go down.
HQ: If the World Cup is a complete nightmare, it might illicit another knee jerk reaction?
ME: At the end of the day, you just have to accept that if you are going to attract a high profile coach, then there’s always the possibility they are going to be recruited elsewhere.
HQ: Finally Mark, what are your goals and aspirations for Quins in 2007?
ME: I would like to get to the Heineken Cup this year, although it’s going to be a tough ask now. We’d certainly have to win the two games this week (Newcastle and Bath) and get a couple of away wins somewhere like Bath, Northampton, maybe Saracens. It is do-able, but we are probably a couple of games shy of where we needed to be to really have a good launch pad for that. The Challenge Cup is looking difficult too, although not impossible.
Sitting here in a year’s time (Thanks Mark, I’ve written it in my diary! HQ) I’d like to see us in the top half, not the bottom half. I’d like to see a couple of our young forwards come through. We’ve had a lot of young backs, but I’d like to have seen one or two of Rogers, Inglis, Robshaw, Robson, Lambert step up.
I’d like us to have a bit more depth in some of the positions where we know we are a bit thin and I’d like us to have put another thousand on the average gate.
It comes back to those three things we started on – your own players, size of your stadium, your average crowd. If you can keep building on those three things, then you know you are getting stronger as an organisation.
Then you’ve got the short term. You’ve got to have a good Director of Rugby; recruit well. I suppose we are moving into different waters there (already). We have a larger squad, we are able to devote more resource to it and over time that will significantly change the composition of the squad we’ve got to perform with.
Again, that doesn’t change things overnight, particularly when you have just come out of ND1. There is no doubt that people will wait and see how you get on or require a premium to come and play for you, as opposed to one of the top four sides.
In that sense you’ve got to break a vicious circle and make it a virtuous one. Ironically, sometimes a successful club can attract the same player on a lower salary because there’s a chance of lifting silverware, playing with high quality players and international recognition.
Coming back to the Union, it’s so frustrating though. We all know if we could separate the different elements of the season, we could make it even more compelling. It’s compelling now, even with a lot of things wrong with the structure. It is a great game and there’s much more “tribalism”, people feel it much more than they did 10-15 years ago. It’s much more like South Wales used to be.
There is an opportunity there, but the biggest challenge we’ve got in the club game is grounds. If we are really going to be a serious player as a sport we’ve got to be able to have six games on a weekend and at least 20,000 at every game; 25-30,000 at some. That’s what we should be aiming for.
To do that is going to require massive investment and to generate the amount of finance to do that you are going to have to keep wages reasonable as a percentage of turnover. To do that you cant do it on the European model, you’ve got to embrace the Australian/American model that will allow you to generate sufficient funds within the game to invest in facilities to grow the spectator base so you become a real player.
That’s why I’m in favour of ring fencing and all the other stuff. Actually, I do appreciate the vicarious thrill of the Sword of Damocles (relegation). It is compelling. However, with the right structures and embracing the right models, I think we could have 10-12 clubs the size of Leicester – I don’t mean Leicester now, I mean the plans for Leicester to go to 25,000 - within 15 years.
We won’t while we’ve got the structure that we’ve got. It lends itself beautifully to 3 big clubs in each country.
HQ: Thanks for those insights and taking the time to talk to comeallwithin.
ME: No worries!