The trend in Europe, for some time, has been to go Kiwi. The Kiwi coaches are everywhere. New Zealanders are coaching half the RBS Six Nations Championship teams and two of the four Welsh regions, and it is hardly unknown for the Lions to opt for grey matter from New Zealand, too.
Yet in England, where the Aviva Premiership starts tonight, the trend has been resisted as clubs have looked in a different direction: towards Ireland.
Brian Smith, the London Irish director of rugby and an Australian who won nine caps for Ireland, could be included on the list. Yet that just complicates matters.
We are talking really of the Ireland team of the late Nineties, when Conor O’Shea was full back, Mark McCall centre and David Humphreys the No 10. Now that Humphreys has gone to Gloucester as director of rugby, they are, between them, also running Harlequins and Saracens, three of the biggest clubs in the country.
Their connection was at its tightest when they were all playing for London Irish. Often after training they would go into Hampton to share coffee, carrot cake and opinions.
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“We would talk rugby a lot,” McCall recalls. “I suppose you could see potential coaches in all of us.”
As O’Shea says: “We loved the game. We were all like, ‘If I was in charge, this is what I’d do.’ ” That is what we are now finding out.
Back then, O’Shea shared a flat with Humphreys, though of the three it was Humphreys who never really thought of rugby as a post-playing career. Humphreys already had a law degree, did part-time work in local solicitors’ offices and his future seemed set.
There is, though, a type of critic that the Irish call the “hurler on the ditch”. These are the people on the touchline full of advice who never get involved themselves. In 2008, when Humphreys retired as an Ulster player and was invited to take over as director of operation instead, his “gut reaction”, as he puts it, was that he could never be that hurler.
Thus did a healthy connection remain and the information exchange was busy. “We’ve faced similar challenges, bounced ideas off each other.” Humphreys says. When McCall moved from Castres to Saracens in 2009, Humphreys would still be on the phone to him, sometimes twice a week.
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“We would compare what was happening in England with what was happening in Ireland,” Humphreys says. “For me it’s about trying to learn. Conor and Mark have been unbelievably successful in this league, so for me it was about what they had done, how they had done it and how could I translate that to Ulster?”
Now it is all little more complicated. “I’m not sure it can be so open,” Humphreys says.
“I’ve got mixed feelings about him coming to the Premiership,” McCall says, smiling, “because I’ve no doubt he’ll make Gloucester better.”
Nevertheless, it was not long after moving in at Gloucester that Humphreys drove down for dinner with O’Shea.
“We shot the breeze for the night,” O’Shea said. “We’ll have a friendly rivalry now. It’ll be like when we’re on the golf course together; I’ll want to beat him desperately.”
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The first view of Humphreys’s learning is this evening and, given that they are starting against Northampton, the Aviva Premiership champions, away from home, it will be some opening night. Gloucester do not just have a new director of rugby in Humphreys; the sweeping-out of the old guard at the club was so complete that almost the entire coaching staff is new; there are eight new members of staff and 26 new players.
On paper, they certainly look a cracking team, though you do not need Humphreys’ education in the game to know that this is categorically not the way to build a team and a club. You go so completely from the foundations only if you have no faith in the existing structure. As Humphreys says: “Twenty-six players? We would hardly have turned over 26 players in my entire six years at Ulster.”
It is worth noting, too, that he is inheriting players that he did not recruit himself — not that he would suggest that he was unhappy with the recruitment. Of course not. For starters, he cannot speak highly enough of James Hook, a new arrival at No 10. The question, though, is how long it will take to blend the new mixture.
Humphreys has been honest with the players on this, that they are operating under unusual circumstances. “We’ve been bubbling along happily,” he says. “But we have asked the players to be open-minded. We’ve said: ‘Don’t fret over what’s going to happen.’
“Laurie [Fisher, the new head coach] only arrived four weeks ago. So we’ve had four weeks to prepare for a game against the Premiership champions. So our whole focus has been one goal: be the best prepared for Northampton that we can be.”
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Was he given targets and a timescale? “Timescale wasn’t put on it,” he said. “Everyone believes that Gloucester as a club has the potential to be one of the top teams in England and Europe. But everyone talks ‘potential’ with Gloucester; somewhere we have to move from potential to delivering. That is the challenge.”
It begins tonight. And when Humphreys makes his touchline debut in the Premiership, two former team-mates will be watching very closely.