Making a name for himself

Ireland v Scotland: Johnny Watterson gives a fuller picture of Frank Hadden, the man who is reviving Scotland's fortunes

A number of commentators have felt compelled to draw on football analogies to get to the heart of Frank Hadden's renovation of Scottish rugby. When his appointment was made after the knives had cut the ground from under Matt Williams last season, the question on most people's lips from outside Scotland was Frank who? Now we know. Hadden is the man who runs what Eddie O'Sullivan described this week as "the team of the championship so far".

While O'Sullivan may have been engaging in pre-match hocus-pocus, his view went uncontested. Scotland have beaten France and England under Hadden, and today at Lansdowne Road they take another step towards winning this year's championship. Under Williams the team had managed just one victory over Italy in two Six Nations tournaments.

The football comparisons to Walter Smith, the Scottish football coach and Chelsea's Jose Mourinho come in the wake of Hadden's low-key appointment last September. Like Smith, Hadden was seen as a born and bred Scot replacing what the natives believed was a failed foreign coach. And not unlike the Stamford Bridge boss Hadden came into the top job after a modest playing career. He went from being a schoolteacher to national coach in five years. Even O'Sullivan took longer than that.

One of his less attractive aspects also echoes that of Mourinho and accusations of aloofness and being opinionated have followed him since his earlier coaching stint with Edinburgh. On occasion those traits have tended to keep players at a distance.

At the outset Hadden refused to take any Scottish Rugby Union media training in order to soften his image and he also made some enemies among players who accused him of being intransigent in his thinking. His former job as head of PE and director of rugby at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh has also led to the caricaturing of him as being too "schoolmasterly". If his dealing with players during his tenure at Edinburgh is anything to go by his default setting under pressure appears to revert to a classroom-style discipline.

"There was one occasion when he was . . . giving the team meeting and one of the players spoke up and said, 'no I don't think you're right there'," said an Edinburgh journalist during the week, adding: "Hadden then asked the player who spoke to stand up, leave the meeting and go out and wait in the corridor and he would talk to him later.

"But he's quite a complicated character. I wanted to talk to him after he was appointed. He said yes but that he wouldn't talk at all about himself or his background. He would only talk about rugby and the Scotland team. He reminds me of Declan Kidney in that he plays his cards very close to himself."

It was this initial inability to deal with adults who would question his opinions that coloured some of Hadden's early management style.

When he first came into the Scotland set-up there were few who publicly had confidence in him, believing that with Edinburgh he had under-performed. There was also a strong feeling Scotland, with their thin budgets, opted for a low-cost appointment.

But despite it all, Hadden has won over the Scottish public. His way of dealing with players and media is demonstrably not an issue in the Murrayfield stands as long as the team continues to play with passion and commitment. The pejorative views of him are also balanced by the positive way he has brought back a new-found sense of worth collectively and individually. If nothing else, he has succeeded in turning team moral entirely around.

Where Williams was said to have sold the team the idea they couldn't tackle and wouldn't win a match for 18 months, Hadden convinced them they were excellent tacklers and that they would win matches because they were good players.

"When Frank took over, the first thing he said was, 'Right. You're all awesome players otherwise you wouldn't be in the Scotland set-up'. Frank is good at picking up on the various personalities and getting the best out of them," said Scotland secondrow Scott Murray.

Hadden has also changed the regime and the whole tempo of how the team communicates and prepares for games. The endless training sessions and the bewildering number of team meetings that characterised the Williams era was replaced with minimal meetings and the more benign policy of allowing players back to their clubs and assembling a week before the international match.

As a critical Scottish rugby writer put it: "Hadden has undone a lot of the lunacies of the Williams era and has got decent players, who were under performing, to perform again."

The 51-year-old is also a deep thinker about the game and not unlike his early mentor, Ian McGeechan, his technical nous is widely acknowledged. Hadden's natural inclination is to play a quick expansive game that's both enjoyable for players and fans. As a teacher and successful schools coach, he occasionally forbade his outhalf to kick the ball in order to get young players used to a running game.

Former Scotland coach Jim Telfer recalls Hadden's talent for skills development and analysis.

"Frank was an outstanding schools coach who caught the eye not only because his teams were successful but because he was different," said Telfer. But as the successful battle against England also illustrated, he won't sacrifice necessity for style.

He has also instigated a plan to work more closely with the country's three professional teams and arranged for Glasgow, The Borders and Edinburgh to play their Celtic League games on Fridays to avoid players running straight into national squad sessions.

Since taking over, Scotland have won five out of eight matches and from training almost twice a week, the emphasis has gone into the clubs. Players are no longer arriving at sessions with moral shattered.

"I was behind that," he said at the start of this year's championship. "And it has been vindicated and improved performances. Although I sacrifice some training time, the players are turning up at my sessions with more confidence and self-belief and that's a vital ingredient in top level sport."

Aloof he may be and even intransigent in his thinking. But the former teacher no longer alienates Scottish players.

1954: Born June 14th, in Dundee.

1983: Director of rugby at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh after spell as a teacher at Guiseley School, West Yorkshire, and an unspectacular playing career with Dundee HSFP. Transforms Merchiston into Scotland's top rugby school.

1997: Asst coach with Caledonia Reds.

2000: Head coach of Edinburgh Rugby.

2004: Becomes first coach to take a Scottish professional team to the European Cup quarter-finals. Defeated by Toulouse.

2005: April - Scotland interim head coach after sacking of Matt Williams.

2005: May - Leads Scotland to impressive 38-7 win over the Barbarians.

2005: June 5th - Beat Romania 39-19.

2005: September 15th - Confirmed Scotland's new coach.