Northern rock

“You couldn’t have done it in the early days,” says Ford. “It’s something Eddie (O’Sullivan) and myself have talked about a lot — when to criticise and how hard to be. Keith Wood always wanted it to be harder but of course, Keith rarely made any errors.

“You had some players who were making the same mistake again and again. So we thought that the best way to handle it was one-on-one situations at first. It still is in some ways. But, at times, you need to show them in a team environment. And I think the time is right now.

“To a man, I can say to them, ‘It’s your fault. You’ve not wedged, or you’ve not turfed and that’s the reason they’ve scored. That’s the reason we may not win the Grand Slam this year.’ You can be that hard on them and they’ll go away and there’ll be no repercussions, no sulking. That’s a compliment to them.”

HE WILL be casting a slightly less critical eye over a rugby match this morning. Joseph Ford is playing for Oldham St Anne’s under-15s against Chorley. Like his dad, Joseph is a scrum-half, though he plays full-back for his school, where they play rugby union. He and 11-year-old George Ford are on scholarship with Warrington, one of dad’s old clubs, and the pair train there regularly. Unfortunately, dad won’t see George play for Waterhead against St Helen’s today. He has a flight to Dublin at 1pm. His wife, Sally Ann, will have to provide the post-match analysis on that one.

Ford enjoyed his few days at home this week. Home is Oldham, east Lancashire. His parents, his three sisters and his in-laws all live within three miles of each other. His job takes him to Dublin and London, where he’s been part of the Saracens coaching staff this season. In the mid-1990s it took him to Brisbane for three years. He’ll end up here, though.

“When we moved to Australia, we moved lock, stock and barrel, practically emigrated,” he says. “The wrench with the family were just heartbreaking. I don’t think I could ever put the kids’ grandparents through that again. You’ve got to do what’s best for yourself at times but if you can travel, do your job well and fit that in with your home life, then you’re all right.”

Brian Ashton, another Lancastrian who coached Ireland, albeit briefly, took enormous pride in his place of birth — to him, being from Lancashire was more important than being English. Ford has an accent that’s straight out of Coronation Street but he’s not tied down by roots. As much as he belongs to Oldham, he belongs also to professional sport.

Now 40, he’s been a pro of some sort since he was 16. His first sporting hero was Kevin Keegan. Ford had the perm and Oldham Athletic thought he might have the necessary ability too. After he spent a year, they changed their minds and offered him amateur terms.

It wasn’t a big setback. Phil Larder, his PE teacher at school — and now England’s defence coach — had already told him he’d make it as a rugby league player. He was signed by Wigan at 17 and made his debut that year. He played 533 first-class games in all, for a variety of clubs, and won 10 caps for Great Britain. If he regrets anything, it was having contemporaries such as Brett Kenny, Andy Gregory and especially Shaun Edwards, with whom he had a niggly relationship, before and after Ford left Wigan for Castleford.

“I suppose my proudest achievement as a player were getting picked for Great Britain,” he says. “I was so close for many years before that but so far away. They all came in a couple of years. The clubs I played with won a few trophies along the way, too. I’ll just tell you about one.

“When I were at Castleford, we played Wigan in their pomp. They were winning everything. It was the Regal Trophy final and we beat them 33-2. They hadn’t been beaten in a final for so many years and we kept them tryless. That was a great moment. That really broke Wigan’s back. They started losing games after that.”

Ford’s fly-half that day was Mike Steadman, now Munster’s defence coach. “Fordy was a very clever footballer,” says Steadman. “He was very instrumental in organising the team direction. He was always one of those players who was very opinionated in team meetings both before and after matches and certainly knew his stuff from a very early age.

“He was always very vocal and highly competitive — even now, any breaks made against the Irish frontline defence certainly hurt him. He’ll not thank me for this but he did lack a yard of pace. But he was very adept at targeting spaces and weak defenders. He was an unselfish footballer who played for his team.”

Ford reckons he made up for his lack of pace it by being “a bit quicker upstairs”. He also knew from early on that he could make it as a coach.

“I started doing my coaching courses when I were 20 and I was fully qualified when I were 24,” he says. “Initially I did them because I wanted to make myself a better player. I wanted to see what it was like on the other side of the fence, why coaches said things to you, so I could understand. My father used to push me in that direction. I used to come home and say, ‘I don’t know what he wants from me, I don’t know what he means.’ He told me to go on a coaching course — most of them were written by Phil Larder, incidentally. I basically got the bug then.”

By the time he transferred to Castleford, he was addicted. The catalyst was coach Darryl van de Velde, a charismatic Queenslander who had an influence that went beyond technique or tactics. He provided a philosophy for life.

“It was just about the way you handle yourself and present yourself,” Ford explains. “He’d stress the importance of looking smart, of having a clean car. At first, I’d say to myself, ‘A clean car? How is that going to make me a better player?’ But it’s about laziness, about the perception you want to give people. It all intermingles with how you come out as a player. If you want to leave your car dirty or you want to spend another half an hour in bed, then eventually that will come through on the game day. You’ll get lazy on a particular play, which will cost your side a try, or whatever.”

FORD WAS back coaching with Oldham when Eddie O’Sullivan called in late 2001. O’Sullivan needed a defence coach and he had two names on his list — Ford and Ellery Hanley. Ford’s interview went well but he reckoned he hadn’t a prayer. Hanley was the best league player he’d seen. He’d already coached St Helens to a Super League title, whereas Ford was coaching in a division below Super League. Hanley even had some experience coaching in union, under Clive Woodward.

O’Sullivan went for Ford. A few months later, Ford plucked up the courage to ask him whether it had been a money thing — had Hanley asked for too much? No, said O’Sullivan. It had nothing to do with money. He hadn’t even discussed cash with Hanley. He just had a good feeling about Ford. He felt he could trust him.

There was a leap of faith on both sides. Ford had a three-year contract offer from Oldham, as against a six-month offer from O’Sullivan and the IRFU. Should he go for security or the chance to work on an international stage — something league could never offer him. If he turned this down, it would bug him all his life. He went with O’Sullivan.

There were scary days early on — in Ford’s first Six Nations, England put 45 points past him, then France 44. Naturally, people wanted to know what the new defence coach had been up to. They missed the fact that the players were in the process of learning an entirely new way of thinking.

It has its own language: turfing, wedging, mad-dogging (all to do with the form of the defensive line), soak tackles, HWD tackles (hit, wrap and drive) and so on. A real no-no is the “toilet tackle”, where the defender plants his feet, crouches and waits. Ireland don’t do toilet tackles anymore.

Rugby union players may still have a way to go to emulate league defences — Ford reckons that if league defenders could operate on the “hindmost foot” law, their sport would never see a try again. For all that, the Ireland players are now tuned into defence.

The recent tackle efficiency stats show how far they have come: 94% against South Africa, 96% against USA, 90% against Argentina and 97% against Italy. As 90% is a base-line, the 86% at Murrayfield was something of a blip. Ford is aiming for a significant improvement next week against England. It is England, after all.

He has been rewarded with a contract up to the next World Cup, not to mention a Lions appointment in New Zealand. No prizes for guessing who recommended him.

“I didn’t know him from Adam when I met him,” says O’Sullivan, “but I just got a good gut feeling about him. It’s one of the things I’m lucky with. He’s an excellent professional, a superb coach. He has good communication skills and pays huge attention to detail. He’s determined, too. He was handed a poisoned chalice with the Irish job but within six months the players had bought into his ideas. And the great thing is he’s still not happy.”

“Oh, no, I’m still craving that perfection,” says Ford. “I know that it will never come but I’m still craving it: that every time there’s a ruck, that we reset properly; every time their scrum-half passes the ball, we move up correctly; every time there’s a decision made, we make the right one, and we can do that for the full 80. That’s heaven.”