LYNN HOWELLS, the former Wales, Cardiff and Celtic Warriors coach, has taken charge at Edinburgh. He was selected from a group of 20 applicants from around the world and Graham Stirling, the club’s managing director, hailed the appointment yesterday as the start of a new era.
Howells has an impressive pedigree, having had trophy-winning stints at Pontypridd and Cardiff, being widely credited with developing a number of the exciting young players now breaking into the Wales team when he was with the short-lived Celtic Warriors and international experience as assistant coach when Graham Henry was in charge of the Wales side. He led the tour to Japan when Henry was running the Lions in 2001.
Edinburgh will look for him to bring the hard-bitten, streetwise edge that characterised Pontypridd, in particular, when he was in charge and encouragingly, when his appointment was announced yesterday, it was to his experience at that club that he pointed first.
“This club has more in common with Pontypridd than with Cardiff,” he said. “Cardiff has been there for a long time, the infrastructure was there and was already professional in the way it was run.
“Pontypridd had to start from fresh and fight their way through. One thing we did identify was that it was all about the support and we tried to play a brand of rugby that brought the fans in. One thing I was very happy about when I saw Edinburgh play was that they do play an exciting style.”
Advertisement
Being something of an unknown quantity in Scotland — Edinburgh supporters will remember him as the man in charge of the opposition when Cardiff ran in 80 points against their team in Frank Hadden’s first game in charge — he will have to go about establishing his coaching reputation all over again, but says that two years as director of rugby at Leonessa, a lower-table Italian club, have recharged his batteries.
He admits that he was emotionally devastated at the way the Welsh Rugby Union engineered the end of the Celtic Warriors, who had the rug pulled after just one season despite numerous successes in both the Celtic League and Heineken Cup. He left to work in Italy because he needed the time to get over it, though being 54 at the time he must have wondered if he would get another chance.
“I wanted to get away from the sharp end of rugby for a little while to reflect,” he said. “The two years in Italy has been a great experience, it has recharged the batteries and over the last six months I have really wanted to get back into British rugby. I am grateful to Edinburgh for giving me that opportunity.
“What went on at the Warriors was devastating. We had a squad capable of moving ahead in the next season and doing very well. From my point of view it was handled very badly. It certainly gives me an extra appetite to go to Wales and play against the Welsh sides.”
The difficulty for Howells is not his times at the Warriors or Pontypridd, but that, while he won the Welsh-Scottish League in his second season in charge of Cardiff, and got them to two Heineken Cup quarter-finals in three seasons, his contract was not renewed and he left with mixed reviews. Many fans in the Welsh capital felt that he had failed to make the most of an expensively assembled team.
Advertisement
However, it is worth pointing out that no Cardiff coach since has improved on his record, and that since he left, the club have gone from champions to underachievers. He also has a track record at Pontypridd, his home club, and the Warriors of being able to spot young talent and bring it through.
Howells’s appointment ends the uncertainty for the players, though he will not move into the job for another two weeks as he tidies up his affairs in Italy, and could end the uncertainty for Iain Paxton and Rob Moffat, the assistant coaches, who are on interim contracts but will hope that the new man in charge will make them permanent.
Howells has been given free rein to appoint his own backroom staff, but his track record on moving clubs is that he has tended to work with the existing personnel. He said yesterday that he was likely to appoint Scotsmen to the posts.