by Paul Cook –

With the new Shute Shield season just under two months away, we continue our look back at each and every team’s efforts in 2015. The next cab off the rank – Eastern Suburbs.

With Director of Rugby Darren Coleman adding the head coaching role to his list of responsibilities in the off-season, the task of steering the club back onto an even keel after the disappointment of a 9th place finish in 2014, was challenging enough. But the retirements of several experienced and long-term Beasties’ servants in the off-season, alongside a debilitating injury toll amongst his highest profile recruitments, combined to lead the good ship Easts towards even rockier shores.

Four wins, 27pts and 10th place on the ladder were certainly not what the doctor ordered. Now firmly ensconced in planning a return to better days in 2016, Rugby News caught up with a brutally honest Coleman recently to pick the bones out of a year perhaps best forgotten at Woollahra Oval.

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Give us a brief overview of the season from your perspective?

Darren Coleman: “Obviously, the results were poor. While we probably didn’t really have any realistic aspirations about winning the comp, we were definitely targeting to finish with a better record than we did. We were what we had been the year before – inconsistent. Overall, it wasn’t good enough and I’ve got to take responsibility for that.”

Easts finished 9th in 2014 with 32pts and I know you were a man on a mission to turn things around. Can you have even imagined with all the work you put in across the off-season in terms of recruitment and training, that you would end up worse off in 2015?

“No, I wouldn’t have thought that, I thought we had a base to build from. What I probably didn’t accurately assess was that, yes, we did do a lot of recruitment but based on where we were and the money we had to spend, we recruited a lot of players that were not as experienced as the ones that retired or left. I probably didn’t give credit to guys like Richard Stanford and Phil Mathers and what they had brought to the team.”

You did recruit heavily compared to every other side, was such an influx of players detrimental in some aspects because of the lack of combinations and familiarity etc?

“I’ve never really contrived to the whole gelling players together thing to be honest. Yes, they need to build combinations, but two to three weeks and you should be able to get a team moving around together – it’s usually a quote for a coach to buy himself some more time.

“We needed to recruit a lot of players because in the last two rounds of 2014, we didn’t have enough to fill four grades, and when we talk about recruitment, of the new players that came to our club, there are probably only six to eight of them that I actively targeted. You’ll be surprised how many players we get on the back of internet enquiries in the Eastern Suburbs, we get a lot of backpackers and blokes who are transient, some players followed their mates to us and I imagine that a lot of the guys that contacted us look at us as an easier strata to play first grade.

“So while the number of new players coming into the club was massive, it wasn’t all down to active recruitment and we certainly weren’t paying top dollar for too many high quality players. The ones we did specifically target – Ryan Dalziel, Jarome McKenzie, Malakai Watene-Zelezniak and Rhys Brodie – they started a grand total of 11 games between the four of them, so we didn’t have much luck on that front.”

Speaking to you after the loss to Northern Suburbs in round five, you said you were still shy in a few departments across the park. Were they skill-sets that were simply hard to find in the off-season or target areas that were missed?

“A bit of that but it’s not like recruiting for a professional team, you don’t go to the marketplace looking for this style of player and there’s one available that can come because you’ve got to have the money to get them and also in club rugby, you may not have a job in their field, which is one of your recruitment tools. It’s just not that simple. We’re like any other rugby club, if someone enquires and wants to come and play for us then I’ll take a meeting with them, whether they’re going to be a 5th grade prop or a 1st grade five-eight. I’ll give them the time and they’re welcome into our training program.”

As you mentioned, you did lose an awful lot of experience in the off-season through guys like Mathers, Stanford, Luke Irwin and Anton La Vin. Did that leave the side just a bit too raw for 1st grade rugby?

“In some positions, definitely. We had a couple of kids locking that probably came in a year or two ahead of when we planned them to and some of our tight forward play suffered on the back of us not having an experienced hooker and/or an experienced lineout general. Our scrum was strong, it was one of our strongest aspects all year and was one area where recruitment targets were achieved. I had a specific task of making sure we had plenty of props and some reasonable ones and we always had at least two or three first grade level props every week.”

You lost five games within 7pts – two of those against the eventual grand finalists, Eastwood and Manly – which indicates the side are not as far off as the final ladder suggested?

“I don’t think we’re far off at all. I know I‘m probably looking through rose-tinted glasses but it didn’t feel like a season where we won four games and lost 14. This group were super positive, they trained hard right through to the end and when we were officially out of it mathematically, we tweaked a few things with our style of play and became a bit more expansive and we played some pretty good games that saw some of our best attacking footy of the year. We had 43 players in a starting XV and even more that came off the bench, and of those 43, 27 made their debuts for the club and 12 of them were under 21-years-old. If I can drip some quality and experience in around them, they’ll be 10-15 game players in the upcoming season and hopefully, a little better.”

Turn a few of those narrow losses into wins and this would be a different conversation?

“I think it was round three against Manly where we had a chance to win, round seven against Eastwood where we potentially could have won and round eight against West Harbour we lost having scored four tries to two. You get those three up and add the Uni win we did get and all of a sudden, at the halfway mark, we’re having almost a fifty/fifty season, instead of being one and eight. In hindsight, I think that had a reasonable effect on a young team. One minute we’re thinking we’re going to end up with a fifty/fifty season and hopefully sneaking in the play-offs and the next we’re one and eight and thinking ‘Where did the season go?’”

Injuries are a part and parcel of the game but Easts did seem to suffer more than most and it was very hard for you to put out the same team every week. That can’t have helped continuity and consistency?

“I’m not going to blame injury because if you do, you probably haven’t prepared well enough with squad recruitment and depth or you’re not at that level yet in your club, or potentially, your sports science and medical program isn’t good enough. We did have a rough trot, not so much with the number of players injured but with the specific players that were affected. We were expecting Jarome McKenzie to be available from round five onwards and he debuted in round 18, and Ryan Dalziel and Rhys Brodie only started six games between them, so there’s your tighthead, hooker and strike fullback all gone. You have them onboard and you’re probably doing a bit better.”

Only wooden-spooners Penrith scored fewer points across the season and you averaged just over 21pts per game. Was that lack of firepower down to player availability, inconsistency of selection, the quality of players in key positions or general poor execution?

“Good question. I think I’d have to say style of play and I’ll take the rap on that, I was probably a little conservative in our style of play in the first half of the season. I haven’t done the exact figures but in our last five or six games, while our win/loss record wasn’t better, I bet we scored a lot more points. The boys didn’t feel as much pressure to win and had more freedom to attack so we didn’t score enough points before that because of the style of play and the lack of freedom I gave the team.”

That’s an approach that flies somewhat in the face of your work with the NSW Country Eagles, who have been one of the more expansive sides in the first two seasons of the NRC. Is that purely driven by personnel?

“For the second season of Eagles footy last year, we had an amazingly skilful, fit and healthy backline and as a result, some of our backline play was the best I’ve ever been involved with. Whereas, the year before we were reasonably expansive but we were a little bit stronger up front. So, I’d love to be expansive but I also love to win and I try and tailor that depending on where I think my competitive advantage is.”

Across the club you had two grades and two colts sides make the finals with 3rd and 4th grade beaten finalists. If all didn’t quite go to plan at the top of the pyramid, it appears that the base is forging some pretty strong foundations for the future?

“One hundred percent. I did a presentation evening on the last Thursday night of 2014 when I took over as Director of Rugby at the club. It was in front of colts and grade about the upcoming 2015 season and I think we had 42 people in the room. I gave the same presentation at the end of the 2015 season, looking ahead to 2016 and we had 132 people present. So, we’ve got numbers, we’ve got depth, we’ve got a great colts coach who has now become fulltime – we’re the only club outside of Sydney University that employs two fulltime coaches now – and we really think we’re onto something. While our 3rd and 4th grade sides both made the grand final, we also took a good step along our colts progression. They finished third and quite a few of them will come up into grade in 2016.”

Lock BJ Edwards won the ‘Best & Fairest’ award by a healthy margin – Photo: SPA Images

Player/s of the Year?

“Our best and fairest was a clear winner – BJ Edwards. He’s got a big engine, a really good work rate and an innate ability to wiggle out of tackles. He’s not a huge lock but he just seems to break tackles and scrums well and make those tough little metres around the edges that are hard to find. Charlie Clifton deserves a mention too. Bar 10 minutes in the naughty chair against Gordon, he played every minute of the season for us and was a real juggernaut.”

Rookie/s of the Year?

“We brought Jack Maddocks up for four games from colts and his debut was in the rain against Eastwood in round seven, and he just showed unbelievable composure beyond his years. By the time he’d finished his fourth game in 1st grade, we’d dropped out of the race while our colts were just warming up so we decided it was better for our program to have him back in there, but although he didn’t play the whole season, he certainly impressed as probably our best young talent coming through. Jack Grant also made some good gains in his first year as a scrum half.”

Most Improved Player of the Year?

“BJ Edwards again. He was a 2nd/3rd grader the year before and won our best and fairest by a long way. That tells it’s own story.”

Players recognised at the next level:

Jake Ilnicki (Canada – WC); Kotaro Matsushima (Japan – WC); Clay Brodie (NSW Country Eagles – NRC); Charlie Clifton (NSW Country Eagles – NRC); Ryan Dalziel (NSW Country Eagles – NRC); BJ Edwards (NSW Country Eagles – NRC); Will Fay (NSW Country Eagles – NRC); Jarome McKenzie (NSW Country Eagles – NRC);Tom Merrit (NSW Country Eagles – NRC); Angus Pulver (NSW Country Eagles – NRC); Alex Newsome (Australia U20’s)