The head coach at Ulster Rugby has been working overtime with the new broom and makes no apologies for it, reports Gerry Thornley
FRIDAY, APRIL 9th. An academic final game of the season at home to Cardiff. The short-term job had been done; four home wins and a critical win away to Connacht having ensured Heineken European Cup qualification. Matt Williams had helped to steady the good ship Ulster.
The players gathered in the dressingroom after the 26-17 defeat and Williams informed them: "Everything changes from today. Every single thing you're going to do as an Ulsterman changes today."
Ulster, he assured them, would be a different organisation. They were going to train at different times of the day, in different ways, in a different place, with different players, different coaches, and with new offensive and defensive systems.
"Change starts now."
For those that would be staying it also made for good psychology, sending them off on their summer tours and holidays upbeat, for they knew as well as anyone that everything had to change.
While he often likens the situation at Ulster to what he inherited at Leinster - a talented crop of players "sick and tired of being bashed about their performances" and an organisation and community desperate for success - he is surely being kind to the scenario at Ulster.
Leinster were underachieving, for sure, and the facilities and set-up lacked the requisite professionalism, but there wasn't about to be a flight of wild-geese proportions as happened after Ulster had plummeted from league champions to the foot of the table in 18 painful months, raising the distinct possibility they could be consigned to the European Challenge Cup.
Confidence was rock bottom too after they were unceremoniously dumped from Europe, and there were clear signs of division within the dressingroom. This prompted Mark McCall's resignation, but that merely sharpened the division.
As in Leinster, there were also rumours of a drinking culture.
"I knew things weren't flash," he says, in a rare example of the Australian lingo lending itself to diplomacy. Williams admits he's never seen a set of circumstances as trying for the players as those he walked into last season.
"I had to take a broom through the place; I make no apologies for that. I had to put a broom through every aspect. I had to put a broom through the players, through the staff and our whole structure, but I wasn't going to do it until the off-season. We had to win three matches."
Ten years ago, he might have been more impulsive and made mistakes. This time, save for bringing in Reggie Corrigan to help shore up the scrum, he didn't overburden a downbeat, divided dressingroom with too much new information. Yet as one player says simply, his impact was immediate and dramatic: "He was just what we needed."
It's in the nature of professional team sports (Munster following Declan Kidney's tenure being an obvious exception) that coaches are hired in times of near crisis, but Williams's coaching career has seemed to specialise in this.
"One of my strengths is building structures and putting things in place," he admits, "and I guess that helped me with this one."
Good standing with the IRFU from his three years as head coach with Leinster also helped, as did good references from Leinster, for which he is grateful.
After his two-year stint as Scotland coach he had spent two-and-a-half years back in his native Sydney, dovetailing corporate speaking with setting up a leadership-training business (which is still going), working in banks and insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
"I learned a massive amount about people and that corporate life is, surprisingly, not anywhere as tough as pro rugby, nor as exciting."
The way his two-year tenure in Scotland ended hurt and was no way for his career to finish. Of course, it's also the nature of the beast that few coaches ride off into the sunset at the top of their profession, but he says Ulster was more a call of vocation than redemption.
He had turned Leeds, Toulon and Japan down. He could have turned Ulster down too, but Irish rugby is a better home for an Aussie whose four grandparents were Irish and who has mostly happy memories of his time coaching here.
Leinster's anti-climactic and slightly unlucky missed opportunity in the Heineken Cup semi-final at home to Perpignan in 2003 should not mask the transformation he wrought with an underachieving squad. The previous season Leinster went 15 matches unbeaten in memorably winning the inaugural Celtic League and reached the European quarter-finals for the first time in six years.
He also helped launch several careers and relaunched others; a fair few players admit they probably owe a number of their caps to Williams.
Leinster have moved on further since then, but his influence and, more important to him, his friendships are still there.
He is often moved to say: "We nearly won the European Cup out of a portakabin in the Old Belvedere car park. What made Leinster wonderful was that it was "we". The players, the committee, the chairman, the CEO and the coaching staff. We did it and that's the secret to success in Ireland - it has to be "we"."
Ironically, on the day we spoke (last Wednesday) he was moving his stuff into a new portakabin office in the Ravenhill car park and thinking, "Here we go again."
They also have a new marketing manager/fundraiser in David Humphreys, a new gym with €190,000 worth of lifting equipment, new dieticians, a sports psychologist and new sponsors and have doubled their medical and physio staff.
The new defensive system to replace the porous one of the last two seasons comes with the help of their new defensive coach, Peter Sharp; an ex-coach of rugby league's Manly, who's had stints as assistant coach with Hull, Melbourne Storm, Parramatta Eels and Newcastle Knights and was regularly sought out by Williams in the 1990s for advice.
There's also a new skills coach (Neil Doak), Steve Williams has remained as forwards coach, Paul Steinmetz is the new player/backs coach and Alex McCloy a new video analyst (with Brett Igoe a consultant). Corrigan is part-time scrum coach
"He's going to be a very good asset for Irish rugby for years to come," says Williams of Corrigan. "He's very good, and will get better at what he does."
All of which, he says, merely gets Ulster parity with others.
The mass exodus has also forced him to recruit heavily.
"Some of those guys wanted to go and some of those guys had to go. Losing Tommy Bowe was a massive blow, but sometimes it's time to move on. For lots of reasons it was the right thing for them to move on."
It was an eye-opener for Williams to learn that without the Charlie McCreevy tax break, Ulster are competing more in the British market, while Munster and Leinster, with more success and hence bigger grounds and crowds, have moved further ahead financially.
Within these constraints and timeframe, Ulster appear to have recruited well, and the advent of a "world-class training venue on-site inside the next 18 months" will, Williams believes, help attract new players.
He is particularly enthused about his crop of indigenous young players, such as the "extremely talented" duo of centre Darren Cave and openside David Pollock, Stephen Ferris, "coming through in leaps and bounds as a number six" and the forgotten Aussie prop of Irish extraction Tom Court, "a late developer who's gong to be a serous prop forward", along with Ryan Caldwell, Tommy Anderson, Chris Corcoran, Neil Hanna, Niall O'Connor and Ian Humphreys.
The latter duo and Paddy Wallace between them must somehow fill the considerable boots of David Humphreys, the rock around which Ulster were built until his injury-bedevilled final season.
"He's a giant and all giants cast a shadow, don't they?" says Williams. "There's no doubt that David's absence last year had a massive impact on the team in a number of ways - leadership number one and on the field. His contribution to Ulster and Irish rugby is absolutely beyond measure and his loss is huge."
Williams's optimism has only been heightened by the narrow defeat to Bath a week ago, when at one point the average age of the back line was 21.
"You very rarely come from the basement to the penthouse in one step," he acknowledges, but he's encouraged by improved fitness results, and knows that they can shore up that defence by 50 per cent, improve a 46-per-cent goal-kicking ratio and improve the worst disciplinary record in the league.
Three of their first five league games prior to entertaining Stade Français are at home, and a win first up against Llanelli would help inject confidence, as would a targeted first win in Wales since September 2006 in Cardiff a week later.
But the win-loss column is a guessing game. No member of the Leinster staff, he reasons, could have envisaged that 15-match unbeaten run at the outset of the 2001-2002 season.
His positive nature, in this cynical age, can almost seem naïve or even be decried as fake, but with Williams it is innate.
Besides, he wants his players to reach for the stars. The danger might be that he would be hoist by his own petard. Maybe he's come to realise that, and is not promising miracles. Well, not overnight anyway.
"But I'll tell you something," he says. "If you can get a spread bet over three years, that Ulster can win something in the next 36 months, I'd take it."
What's new for Ulster this season
Defensive coach:Peter Sharp (formerly Manly rugby league head coach and assistant/ defensive coach with Hull, Melbourne Storm, Parramatta Eels, and Newcastle Knights).
Skills coach:Neil Doak (former Ulster scrumhalf who won 35 cricket caps for Ireland).
Backs coach:Paul Steinmetz (who will continue to play for Ulster).
Players:Ed O'Donoghue (lock, Queensland Reds), Cillian Willis (scrumhalf, Leinster); Ian Humphreys (outhalf, Leicester Tigers), Robbie Diack (number eight, Western Stormers); Clinton Schifcofske (fullback, Queensland Reds); Timoci Nagusa (winger, Tailevu Knights, Fiji), BJ Botha (prop, Natal Sharks).
Facilities: A new temporary on-site gym (with €190,000 worth of equipment), new temporary on-site management offices.
Back-up staff:new dieticians, a sports psychologist, new sponsors, more medical staff; video/performance analyst (Alex McCloy); physiotherapist (Alan McCaldin); resource manager (Mick Ennis).
Operations director:David Humphreys.
