It became noticeable during the 2008 season that some of the protocols I had introduced were being infringed by certain players, particularly the rules relating to alcohol. After the first game that year, Scott Fava was left out of the starting team for our tour to South Africa because he failed a breathalyser test.
The players couldn’t understand why we had left him out, and a group representing the players said they wanted him to play. My response was that we had to set standards. Scotty spent much of the rest of that trip with a face like a pork chop, but he understood the rules. There are responsibilities that come with being a professional sportsman and that point had to be made to the players.
And it wasn’t the first time Fava had been involved in a disciplinary breach involving alcohol. He had also been at the centre of the so-called quokka controversy in 2007. I will never forget being called after a training camp at Rottnest Island to be informed that members of the public had accused two of my players of behaving inappropriately and abusing quokkas. These are small marsupials that look like miniature wallabies and are a protected species. The saga played out amid intense media focus for a few days, and in the end Scotty had to make a public apology and was fined AU$11 000 for his misconduct. The other player involved, Richard Brown, was fined half that sum, as he had only been accused of picking a quokka up. Scotty was alleged to have been a bit rougher with them. The Force brand was getting publicity for all the wrong reasons.
One thing I picked up is that Australian players like to take ownership quickly. They don’t have much respect for authority and constantly challenge you to relinquish your leadership, even when it involves ideas and strategies.
This is very different from the ethos I have found in New Zealand and South African rugby. It might be because the playing group in Australia is comparatively so much smaller. There are only seven schools in Brisbane where rugby union is played and two private schools competitions in Sydney. The schools in Perth are new to the game. So there is a self-preservation instinct, in the sense that they see selection as more important than their development. Australian players always need to be selected to play and there is great awareness of rival codes, such as rugby league and Australian rules football.
The Players’ Association in Australia is also extremely influential, and the player unions that exist within the teams are much more prominent in Australian sides than elsewhere.
Nathan Sharpe was the Western Force captain and he was highly respected. He is a good man, but he did not always communicate the difficult decisions he and I had to make to the team. I believe team leaders should be an extension of the management group and should represent the management to the players. They may agree or disagree when you meet, but, when they leave the meeting, they must be in agreement and take the consensus to the team.
Nathan was adept at raising player issues with me, but he was not so good the other way round and didn’t communicate what I needed to be passed on to the players.
Leadership in team sports is situational, and in rugby union there is no fixed way of doing it. Co-captaincy is happening more now, as there is way too much for one guy to handle. There’s also a big difference between managing the team dynamics and culture, and navigating a team around the field. These are two separate and very different departments, and some coaches are good at one but not the other.
For example, I thought we had trained well before the start of the 2009 season and were ready to go. We were playing in South Africa first and were due to play against the Sharks in our opening game. As the players appeared to be achieving their targets physically, I let them have a few days off to freshen up before the start of the tour.
But some of the guys attended a one-day international cricket match in Perth and Matt Henjak ended up smacking Haig Sare and breaking his jaw at a party afterwards. Two teammates, and there they were, the next day, with one of them sporting a black eye. I called Sharpey and asked him why this had happened.
‘We haven’t even started the competition yet,’ I said to him, ‘and the guys go out and drink like they’re animals. And now I have to go to South Africa without my strongest team because two guys had a fight.’
When the players arrived in South Africa, they just wanted to socialise. I was opposed to that, particularly before a match. After about four years I managed to persuade them to stick to light beers into the post-match court sessions. There were young men in the squad and I had promised their parents that I would look after them.
I had to explain to Nathan that someone would have to be responsible if something went wrong, but he did not deal with it effectively. I had never experienced anything like the Australian drinking culture when I was in New Zealand or England. In those countries, the players liked a drink, but not to the extent the Australians did.
A major shift in my relationship with the Western Force players occurred at the end of that season. We were playing our last game of the Super 14 competition, against the Brumbies, and there was nothing riding on it. But I knew how important it was at least to finish off the season well and retain our fan base. There were 33 000 people in the Subiaco Oval and we were 7-22 down at half-time.
I was walking towards the change room thinking about what I was going to say to the guys. Under normal circumstances, I would have told them to get field possession and attack the breakdowns with more intensity, that sort of thing.
But, given the situation, I decided that the normal approach would be a waste of time. Instead, I put on my ‘company hat’. I knew the fans would be unwilling to come back the following year if we played in the second half like we had in the first, and the commitment shown by the players in the first 40 minutes had been most disappointing.
So I told the assistant coaches, Tony Fearn and John Mulvihill, that I would be very brief and to exit the room with me once I had finished speaking to the team. I wanted to leave it up to the team leaders to take ownership of the situation.
When I walked into the room, I cut straight to it. ‘Listen up, I haven’t got time to waste letting you guys get a drink of water. You guys call yourselves a fucking team, but you don’t even know what the word “team” means. So, you guys, sort it out yourselves.’
Those words were directed at the team leaders, and I could see they didn’t like it. Several of them weren’t being paid by Firepower at that stage, and we had a new CEO after I had spent 10 months struggling on my own without one. Significantly, Mulvihill didn’t follow me out, as I had asked him to.
The players responded to what I had said and came back to win the game 29-22 in a remarkable second-half turnaround. But, even though we won, I could feel the tension in the air afterwards. The players didn’t appreciate what I’d said and they were letting me know with their body language.
But that is the art of coaching: it is not always your job to be nice. I was wearing the hat of the Western Force organisation; I was not their mate. The time had arrived when I couldn’t feel sorry for the players, even if they weren’t being paid. As professional sportsmen, they just had to grow up and perform. They will claim that they did it, that they affected the turnaround – but that is the point. That was what I wanted them to do.
At the same time, because Mulvihill didn’t follow me out of the room as I had asked, it became clear to me that I did not have the support of my assistant coaches.
With the season over, we went into what is known as Mad Monday. In Australia, all professional sporting teams have a day at the end of the season where they let their hair down. And sometimes they go completely over the top.
The team had decided to play some social cricket and I joined them, but it was clear I was getting the cold shoulder. It was obvious that there was some tension in the player group. James O’Connor was negotiating his second contract and he was holding out for more money and a better deal. It had been going on for some time and Matt Hodgson had clearly had a bellyful of it.
‘When are you going to show some nuts?’ he demanded of James. ‘When are you going to show that you are committed to this organisation? Because I am, and these guys are too, so you do it – or you just piss off!’
James didn’t like what was said to him, that was clear, but he did sign.
On another Mad Monday, one of the guys dressed up like one of the Jetsons in a navy uniform. The police picked him up and, fortunately, they were in good humour and dropped him off at home.
Then it was time for my end-of-season one-on-ones with the players, and the exiting and testing at the conclusion of the season. I always gave each player feedback on how his season had gone and where I thought he stood. Some of the players wouldn’t have liked the feedback they got, but it had been a difficult year.
Looking back, it was that brief pep talk I gave the team at half-time that changed everything. You would have to be very imperceptive not to have noticed how the players reacted to me afterwards. You can’t get away with that sort of speech to Australians. I had adopted that manner once before, in a game at North Shore against Auckland, so it wasn’t the first time I had taken that approach, but my brief speech during the Brumbies game was the culmination of a number of things.
As I’ve mentioned, I had spent 10 months without a CEO. Peter O’Meara had resigned after a year in which the franchise had been fined AU$150 000 for breaching player-contracting protocols and he had come under fire for his supposed connection with the Firepower figurehead, who was charged with fraud. He and Peter had been school mates. But, these days, a CEO doesn’t sign off unless it’s a board collective, so he took the hit for the group. That’s the only way I can understand what happened there. Peter was good for the franchise. He had a way with young men. He was also one of the finest cooks I have come across, so I used to visit him often, particularly during the period I was alone in Perth and could only boil an egg.
It was tough for me to go into the new season without him. I was trying to get quality performances and good outcomes and, after some fairly strong seasons, I had hopes of silverware. We had a good financial base and by then we were building the structures. Although the facilities were dilapidated, I felt that that would change – we could do something about it.
But then Peter went, and at the same time it became evident that seven players were not being paid their promised third-party payments, and the pillars started to crumble. Matt Giteau was owed millions. Understandably, he was unsettled. A good mate of mine, Rosco Graham, who was involved in the mining industry, tried to bridge some of the money.
No matter how good you are as a coach, when young men have their minds elsewhere because they are distracted about not getting paid, it becomes really difficult. I was still trying to keep up the standards, even though I could sense they were slipping, and I had no CEO to help me. I just kept telling the staff they needed to maintain the standards we had set, but it became increasingly difficult to do so.
Then, when the new CEO, Greg Harris, was appointed from Sydney University, he made a speech that jolted me. We were at a function in City Beach, in a beautiful restaurant near the ocean. In his welcome speech, Harris said, ‘This club is not all about John Mitchell.’
I thought to myself, ‘Hello, that’s interesting.’ The statement wasn’t good for my sense of security or my future relationship with the new CEO.
After the Brumbies game, we embarked on a development tour of England. We played against Newcastle, Saracens and Northampton. John Mulvihill decided not to come, citing personal reasons. But my guess is that that was when he started walking the corridors and making his move against me.
It probably didn’t help me that, after we came back from that tour, I went to Papua New Guinea to walk the Kokoda Trail, which goes from Port Moresby to Kokoda, where many Australians died in a monumental battle against the Japanese during World War II. My mate Rosco Graham asked me to do the walk with him.
My long overdue holiday meant I was away from the Western Force offices for another two weeks, so there was lots of time for political manoeuvring to take place in my absence. Funnily enough, a friend of mine had warned me before I left to fill in any cracks before setting off.
And, sure enough, when I got back there was a letter waiting for me from the Players’ Association saying that my behaviour was unacceptable for a coach.
Then the Western Force chairman, Geoff Stooke, who had been part of the initial triumvirate with Peter O’Meara, disappeared for 40 days. He was nowhere to be found.
Harris, the new CEO, then called me in and informed me of certain allegations that had been made. He made it pretty clear that he wanted me to walk. I said there was no way I was going to do that. Instead, I busied myself with some of my own investigations to find out what was going on. Everything pointed to Mulvihill working against me; it seemed he wanted me out.
A few days later I had to appear before a group called together by Greg Harris. There was a psychologist present and the meeting was highly orchestrated, but there were a few people in the room who were my allies. I also brought my lawyer along because I was entitled to have someone there to take notes.
It was a horrible experience. For three hours I had to listen to allegations that I was too hard on the players and that I’d used a profanity when addressing the team doctor when we were in Northampton. When I asked my agent, John Fordham, to refresh my memory for this book, he recalled that some of the allegations were ‘particularly ridiculous and over the top’. One of them was an objection from Mulvihill to my sponsored Chrysler car! It was also alleged that I was not giving the assistant coaches enough time to do their work and that I wasn’t listening to management.
When I look back on it now, it’s easy to see where these perceptions had originated. The organisation was breaking down and I was the one who had to play the policeman. But what would you do if you had sacrificed a lot to build an organisation from zero and all of a sudden you could feel the pillars were being taken away?
What you do is try to keep it together. Some of the accusations Greg and the others made were on the money, and I took those on the chin. But some of what I was accused of was just rubbish and completely exaggerated. Afterwards I was asked what I thought of the allegations, but I just thanked everyone for their collective feedback and said that it had been very helpful.
The reason I mention that the feedback had been collective was because people had had plenty of opportunities to come to me individually with any problems or grievances. I had always been open to that. No one had aired their grievances through the normal processes, but now, suddenly, they had the balls to do it collectively. Again, I got the impression that there was a conspiracy to create the desired outcome.
Two of my allies came to me afterwards and said, ‘Mitch, you are gone.’ They were Matt Tink, who was the guy in charge of community rugby, and my academy man, Geoff Townsend. I told them most emphatically that I was not gone, and I made sure I looked everyone who crossed me at that time in the eye. I was just not prepared to give up. Maybe I had made mistakes, but I could learn from them. Why hadn’t there been any consultation with me before it got to this point?
The Force hooker, Tai McIsaac, was the players’ representative at the meeting. He rang me afterwards and told me he was sorry I’d had to go through that experience. He said he didn’t know what to say and that he really respected me as a person. I don’t know whether he was being genuine. I thought it might just be violins. But Tai was a decent person, so perhaps what he said was in earnest.
Then Greg Harris sent me home. He told me I was not allowed on the premises. That is probably what gave rise to the rumour that the players had locked me out of training sessions. It was inaccurate – what really happened was that the CEO barred me from the premises.
But I felt I had been done an injustice, and the chairman, the man who should have been making the call on all of this, was AWOL. I kept ringing Geoff Stooke, leaving messages on his phone, telling him I was trying to get hold of him and that I needed to talk to him.
Harris then approached my agents at the Fordham Company in Sydney to broker a deal. He got roasted.
A major turning point for me was when Harris informed John Fordham that he was bringing an industrial relations person to the meeting. In other words, they wanted to HR me – terminate my contract. Fordham told Harris in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances would the meeting go ahead if my dismissal was going to be the basis of it. So Harris pitched up alone and, according to John, he was in such an emotional state that he needed to take a break to recover.
My mate Rosco asked me to meet him to discuss the way forward. Again, I told him that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was the only person who fully understood what the organisation had been through and for 10 months I had been its only leader.
Rosco and I went to see Harris at his home, which the CEO wasn’t happy about. He stressed again, as he had before, that I had to go. I told him that I would only go if I had done something wrong. I reminded him that he hadn’t been there for 10 months – in that time there had been no CEO.
But although Harris was completely new, he had arrived with an agenda. He can’t have been in a good personal space at the time either because his partner had passed away after arriving in Perth.
In retrospect, perhaps one of the factors that negatively influenced my relationship with Harris was that I may have said too much again. I may have made the same mistake I had made in New Zealand when I got into Chris Moller’s car to drive back to Hamilton after our management seminar.
In this instance, I had travelled with Harris to Melbourne to meet an Australian Football League Academy coach; we attended an Australian Football League game and spent the weekend together. Perhaps I was too outspoken again, because after that I got burnt. Perhaps I shouldn’t get into cars with people.
After telling Harris that I wasn’t going to resign from my position, an official investigation was launched into my behaviour. It cost me AU$70 000 to make sure I had a solid defence. It might seem I went to extraordinary lengths to preserve my position, but when I looked in the mirror and assessed the cold, hard facts, I concluded that I had just been doing my job and had been drawn by circumstances from being a mentor into being a disciplinarian.
Much of what I was accused of at the Force was echoed later when I was at the Lions. I was accused of taking on speaking engagements during working hours, and I was even accused of plagiarising the Hurricanes’ game plan.
Hello, guys, do you not realise that coaches talk? Do you not have coaching relationships? The Australian mindset might not be to share information, but it is standard practice in the rest of the world. I have four coaching mates around the globe with whom I am very close and who can call me up at any time for information or advice. And they will share information and give me advice if I need it. If you are going to share, you have to understand what you are sharing and have the conviction to sell it to your players.
The result of the investigation was that I was found not guilty. Nevertheless, I was still not allowed back in the organisation. Finally, when my frustration was at its peak, Stooke eventually answered one of my calls and agreed to meet me in a coffee shop in the Perth suburb of Claremont.
When he pitched, he was wearing sunglasses. I said, ‘Good day, Geoff. I have been trying to get hold of you for some time. By the way, can you take your glasses off? I want to look you straight in the eyes. This is a bloody serious meeting!’
I told Stooke that the Force brand was being damaged big time at that juncture. ‘For whatever reason, you have chosen your path,’ I said. ‘The leadership of the brand is in question, and has been since O’Meara left. The leadership in the player group is cracking because rules have been broken and players are not being paid. How do you create confidence and stability when someone is left floating when he wasn’t wrong in the first place, but might be able to learn from the situation?’
I then told him that what he needed to do was to make sure that I was allowed back the next day to run the joint as head coach. ‘Right at this minute, you need that. And you have to take responsibility because, whether you like it or not, you are the person in charge of this organisation,’ I said.
I played the emotional game on Stooke. I reminded him that he had employed me, and that he, O’Meara and I had formed that initial group that had started building the franchise in 2005. And that he had gone missing for 40 days when I most needed his leadership.
‘Now there is a new CEO, who perhaps doesn’t like my style. But you don’t just act unilaterally – you talk about it. What I am asking is quite simple. I am asking you to lead and to reinstate me as the coach tomorrow.’
My powers of persuasion must have been effective because, the next day, I was back at the Western Force offices – reinstated as head coach!
Behind the scenes, John Fordham had also been applying a lot of pressure on Stookes. He told Stookes that if he did not adhere to our requests he would go to the media that Sunday and tell them how abysmally the Force were handling the issue, and about the problems that had arisen because we did not have a CEO for most of the year. It was Fordham who phoned to tell me, ‘Mitch, you are free to return to work tomorrow.’
You should have seen the guys’ faces when I walked in there. They had worked against me and broken down any trust we had shared, but now they had to work with me again. No one could look me in the eyes.
From my side, I made concessions, such as accepting that I would have to do some work with the management guys so I could try to understand some of the problems that existed. I abided by all the performance reviews, and checks and balances.
But the body language of the guys in the office was terrible. My return obviously just wasn’t part of the plan. Those who had targeted me all ended up leaving after the following season, including Mulvihill.
The captain, Nathan Sharpe, had gone missing during the whole furore. I had a coffee with him in an attempt to get some insight into what had gone wrong, but I don’t think he was completely honest with me about what was happening in the team, which would only allow the discontent to fester. I thought he would feel that he could speak freely to me. Obviously I was wrong.
Perhaps I should have communicated with him more in 2009 and filled him in on the circumstances that were causing the problems at the Western Force. I’m not sure he even realised how difficult it was to coach a Super Rugby franchise without a CEO.
But, then, I don’t like to put that sort of burden on a captain. If there is one person who has to carry the hat for the organisation, it should be the coach.
When a team is underperforming, I also tend to lay off the young guys. So I focused more on the senior players, the ones who should be leading. But the senior guys were sensitive and performance wasn’t their priority then anyway – they were distracted by the payment issues. I had to be in their faces, continuously exhorting them to perform well, but I could not because my middle-management wasn’t experienced enough to carry some of the load.
The team manager, Richard Trent, was also just learning, whereas in the void created by not having a CEO, he should have taken charge of many of the problems. Both he and our first manager, Greg Marr, didn’t understand the demands of high-performance sport, as far as I was concerned. The role of team manager/facilitator is very underestimated, in my opinion.
Of course, Harris wasn’t happy that I was back in the job, as he had wanted me out. But he didn’t last for long there, citing personal reasons for his exit a few months later.
So, heading into the 2010 season, I was once again in charge of the Western Force and trying to get through the season with an unhappy assistant coach, who had lost my trust. Sometimes I was wrong in my character assessments, and maybe Mulvihill, who had his first professional opportunity under me, was one of those. The first time I met him, he gave me one on the jaw while we were in a taxi on the way home after a night out. He said he was just mucking around, but maybe I should have seen that as a warning sign.
I had also misjudged Ben Darwin, the scrum coach. Ben was a former international, but he couldn’t handle the pressure and suffered emotionally. I hadn’t realised this until he told me one day that he was being put under too much pressure and was working too hard. He was a heck of a nice guy, but in my opinion he derived more satisfaction from public speaking than from coaching.
Perhaps it was foolish on the part of the Western Force administration to allow us to go into the 2010 season with a fragemented management team. Plus, we had lost some key players. The season was just a blur to me. I felt I had achieved my mission, having been cleared of so-called misconduct, but I had also gone through a very painful time.
And we had another change of CEO. I had a coffee with the new incumbent, Vern Reid, who had been on the board when I was appointed. He asked me what my plans were for the future of the franchise and made it clear that I could expect a lot of pressure. I didn’t reply to his question there and then, but none of the CEOs after O’Meara were a patch on him, so I knew I faced an uphill battle. The new CEOs were coming in without any awareness of the history and were not listening to my side of the story.
I refused to take the cotton-wool route of cosying up to the players – even though I empathised with their situation. It was my job to get performance out of a team that was having to rebuild structurally. And I stood by those convictions.
We did have a few good moments that season. We beat the Crusaders and we were the first team to beat the Stormers that year, who went on to contest the final against the Bulls. I had brought in David Hill and Ben Castle, so there was some quality to offset the loss of the likes of Matt Giteau.
I was able to spread the load more now because, at last, there was a CEO in place, unlike the previous year. At one point in the season, the kicking coach, Daryl Halligan, told Mulvihill that what he had done the previous year had been inappropriate.
‘You are a low bloke,’ Daryl told him. He had obviously been planning for a while to have a crack at him, but had to make sure HR had his back covered before he could do it. You’ve got to be careful what you say in Australia. Halligan clearly felt the work environment had been undermined, and he was right.
So, halfway through 2010 I surprised everyone by saying I would not renew my contract with the Western Force. I wanted to look after my own well-being and also give them a chance to select a new coach and give him time to work on the transition. It was important for me to leave on my own terms, given how they had gone about things the previous year.
In the end, I felt I left in a good way, and on my own terms.