Lead Rugby Consultant Steve Diamond spoke to the media today ahead of Saturday’s Gallagher Premiership match against Sale Sharks at the AJ Bell Stadium (kick-off 3.00pm).
Here’s what Steve had to say:
On going back to Sale
- We have got a lot to do. We have been comprehensively beaten over the last two weeks and going up to Manchester as a rival or old flame, as Sale are describing me, is something different to what I’m used to.
- It’s a new experience but it’s something that I am looking forward to.
- I suppose it’s a bit like a divorce. Of the last 30 years I was there for 26 of them. Some divorces end nicely and some don’t. I was fortunate that mine ended in an amicable way. When divorces end in an amicable way then you get invited back into the house now and again.
- Sale have got a younger model looking after them and Worcester have picked me up, an old lag. We will see over the next two or three years who has got the best deal won’t we?
- Sale’s squad, their position and basis behind the scenes took a long time to build. A lot of people were involved in that and they deserve a lot of credit. I was a figurehead for a long time
- But you move on to pastures new and I’m excited about what we are trying to do at Worcester over the next few years.
On Alex Sanderson
- I made him captain at Sale in 2001 when he was the youngest captain in the Premiership. He moved to Saracens with me when I left in 2004 and he stayed on after I left in 2006.
- We have always maintained a good friendship. There’s a rivalry which is obvious and, to be fair to Al, the score is about 20-0 to him because he has coached Saracens and I coached Sale and, more often than not, we got beat.
Are there similarities between the two clubs?
- Both clubs have always engendered their own players through their academies.
- I spent a long time talking to the academy staff last night about how we can improve things and get more kids coming through.
- Everybody is good at these things but everybody can also get better at these things. That’s the job we have here at Worcester, to produce young talent to complement the experienced, gnarly players that we looking to bring in over the summer.
What are your ambitions for Warriors?
- We want to be respected in the Premiership as a highly combative team and we want to be respected in Europe.
- Those footsteps need to start slowly. Over the next month everybody will be informed who is staying and who is going and then we will start the recruitment drive.
- I’m not going to be ruthless with it. It’s going to be fair. Everybody is going to be given the opportunity to play and show their wares.
- We will streamline the squad a little bit. It will be a healthy, vibrant environment going into next season where players want to play for the club.
- Facilities-wise the club is outstanding, location-wise it’s brilliant. We just need a bit more housekeeping done behind the scenes which we are doing at the moment.
- Four or five of those decisions have been made already and the people who will be leaving have promised me that they will be very diligent and work as hard as they possibly can until we pass them on to their next journey in life.
- There are some great players here but there are some who haven’t fulfilled their potential. Over the last two weeks and over the next three or four weeks they will be given that opportunity.
- If, luckily, they take it, then brilliant. If they don’t, we will make decisions on those people.
How will you make decisions on which players to keep?
- The senior players at this club and the coaching staff, who are very diligent, plan how we are going to play.
- There are two groups of senior players – attack and defence – and how we analyse the game is based on what we have said we are going to do and what the game plan is.
- The way to stay in the team is do as we ask you to do. It’s not me per se who is asking them to do it, it’s the coaching team and the senior players.
- So, the game plan is driven by the players on the field. It’s who can fit into that plan on a regular basis.
- It doesn’t mean that if you have one poor game or miss a tackle you are out. It’s: can you stick to the plan 80 per cent of the time during game? If you can, great, there’s a career for you.
You said after the Leicester match that you thought the player had been overworked
- For the last ten years of my coaching career I have done very little contact in training.
- How that manifests itself is in your injury status and for ten years Sale had the lowest injury status in the Premiership by a country mile.
- At Worcester it’s not as good as that and part of that is an over-training mentality. If things don’t go well on the field everything is reactionary. By the time you get a week out of the way you have been in for five of the seven days.
- That is not conducive to playing sport at a professional level. You can’t just bring them in for longer hours to train harder.
- You have got to give them a good reason and a why and that is what I try to do with the help of the current coaches.
- And the current coaches have impressed me. They are diligent, they are hard-working, they know their stuff and they seem like good people.
- The hardest thing in life, especially in sport, is to find good people. It’s easy to find good coaches, there are lots of them about, but they tend to flit between jobs.
- If you are like me and you can hold jobs down for ten years then you build an infrastructure around you where people have the ability to do their jobs.
- Steve Diamond is top of the tree at Worcester in name only. Mark Irish does the forwards, Jonny Bell does the defence and Mark Jones does the attack and they are good at what they do. They are as good as I have seen.
On Finn Theobald-Thomas’s England Under-20s call-up
- He wasn’t in the initial squad but he’s now been picked and it’s a great opportunity for him.
- In the hooker, prop and scrum-half positions Premiership clubs need four to get you through a season.
- Finn’s been elevated to the matchday squad by England which means he’s in the top five or six players in the country in that position.
On Ted Hill missing out on England selection
- Ted has been unlucky. He’s a fantastic player but there is a plethora of players in his position.
- As we saw at Leicester that he is a fantastic athlete and player and he can get better. I’ve not met anyone who trains harder than him and he has a brilliant manner about him.
- He will get picked in the future without a doubt.
Injuries
- Fin Smith and Andrew Kitchener are both available this weekend
- Ollie Lawrence is still out with a longer term injury.
- Francois Venter took a knock on his calf at Leicester and we are awaiting the result of a scan.
- Owen Williams is not quite 100 per cent but we feel that another week or two on the training paddock will get him back there.