'East End Yobbo' Dick Best still pained by brutal Harlequins exit

Nearly three decades have passed since Dick Best was unceremoniously dumped by Harlequins, yet the scars remain to this day.

The former England head coach and Harlequins’ first professional Director of Rugby spoke candidly about the hurt he still feels when interviewed for the Rugby Lives YouTube series,

Under Best, Harlequins finished third in the league and were Pilkington Cup semi-finalists when the axe fell, reportedly due to a player-coach dispute over attitudes towards training.

“I had a very nasty separation from Harlequins after 25 years, as coach and Director of Rugby, and we had a nasty spat for a year before we got into court and they settled on the steps, if you like; they took it right to the wire, and for that I will never forgive them because of what they put myself and my family through,” Best said, with emotion in his voice.

Best, who came from a catering background, was only a season into a 10-year contract at the time, but had the foresight to wager that it might not be the most stable of jobs, despite throwing the kitchen sink at it.

“I’d managed to save a war chest because I always felt something like this might happen, so I had this contingency fund to support my family whilst this went on,” said Best, who went on to add London Irish to a CV, which also included the 1993 Lions tour as well as England.

“They had to pay me over a period of time which nearly broke them, so that was that.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced a player-coach dispute, or an uncomfortable exit.

Best had the unenviable task of replacing Geoff Cooke, who’d led England to the 1991 Grand Slam and the final of the World Cup later that year largely based on around forward-orientated game plan and the kicking of Rob Andrew.

When Cooke’s England tried to expand their horizons in the final of the World Cup against Australia, they came unstuck because they were playing a brand of rugby largely alien to them in a white jersey.

Best insisted that to take their game forward they needed a Plan B, as well as a Plan A, but Brian Moore, who has just announced that his retirement from commentating on rugby, wasn’t impressed.

“The following season the only change to the squad was me, and we’d won a Grand Slam in ’91 and I thought I’m going to get all the blame here if we don’t win another Grand Slam. But we did win a Grand Slam and it was hailed as a great year for English rugby,” he said.

“Brian Moore stood up, as a spokesman for the forwards, and said, ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’, and I said, ‘well, it is broken because we need to be the best in the world at the tight game when it rains and we need to be the best in the world when it is dry and we can use everyone.

“We need to two or three game plans and we need to be the best in the world at all of them, and everyone needs to get on board and buy into this.”

When he coached England, Best’s record was played 17, won 13, lost two, and those defeats were by a point. Then in August 1994 they sacked him. Jack Rowell had come in and seemingly wasn’t a fan. “He and I just didn’t get on.”

As Chairman of the England Coaching Sub-Committee, Graham Smith, who happened to be godfather to Best’s daughter, was sent around to his house by the RFU to deliver the news in person.

“One Sunday morning, I was presenting some prizes at a mini rugby festival and I came back home and saw a very nice car outside my house. I knew it belonged to Graham, he was a friend of mine and I just thought what’s he doing here,” Best recalled.

“When I walked into the house, my wife said. ‘Graham’s here, he’s come to see you’. Graham couldn’t look me in the eye and I just looked at him and I said to him, ‘I know why you are here, it’s okay, I understand. and he just said, ‘I’m sorry’, about 11 times.

“I said, ‘Graham, I am not going to take it out on you’, so I left it at that and he went on his merry way and within two weeks Harlequins had been on the phone saying we’d like you to come as the new Director of Rugby and write the blueprint for the new professional era.”

Best was successful, too successful, at the start of his second spell coaching the club, having previously led them to John Player Cup glory in 1988.

Players were now contracted and also enjoyed the fruits of a lucrative bonus scheme, which was rapidly adding up to a considerable sum after 14 straight wins.

Hemorrhaging money, the club stepped in. “I then got a visit from the head bean counter, or the finance director, a Welshman called Guy Williams, a lovely bloke,” Best revealed. “He came into my office and he said, ‘all this has got to stop’, and I said, ‘all this what?’ He said, ‘all this winning’, and I said, ‘you’re joking.’ He replied, ‘no I am not, I only budgeted for 15 wins in the first season and you’re already on 14 and it’s not even Christmas.’

Quins was Best’s club, despite it not being an obvious fit. He didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge and wasn’t working in the City.

“I was an East End yobbo to be perfectly honest when I first went there (from Hendon) and I became a little bit more cultured as I went to night school and went to read and write. I was just a boy from the different side of the tracks, I suppose.

“I’d walk in the changing room and I’d sit down and I was the only non-Oxbridge boy in the changing room, and they’d talk about things, and use big, long words, that I didn’t have a clue about as most of them were bankers or traders, or whatever, and I just thought, ‘god, I hope no one asks me anything’!

“But then one day, a guy called Nick French, a Cambridge graduate, a very bright guy, a lovely guy, I think he felt sorry for me, said, ‘I think you’d be better off in the other changing room’, and in the other changing room there were a few rough-house players like the Claxton brothers, who were real rough diamonds, great people.”

Best’s last job in rugby was as a Red Adair-type consultant figure at Southend, who were second-from-bottom in the 2012/2013 National 2 South table midway through the season, having lost seven on the bounce. “They came to me and said, ‘next year’s our centenary, and we don’t want to go down, can you come in and turn it around’?”

“In the end, being a mercenary, they succumbed to my fee. You know when someone asks you to do something and you quote a stupid fee, hoping they’ll say, ‘oh no, it’s too much.’ Anyway, I charged them a lot of money and they agreed to it and I thought, ‘oh shit, I’ve got to do it now.'”

Realising he had ’45 Jason Leonards’ on his hands, who drank too much and weren’t that skilful, Best instructed them to just kick and chase and only play rugby inside the opposition 22. By April, they were safe. “We’d won that many games by not playing any rugby, which was quite sad.”

Feeling like a charlatan for accepting ‘a big wedge of money’ whilst those around him volunteered their services freely, Best left when his job was done, and has never put on the tracksuit again.

You can watch the full Rugby Lives interview with Dick Best here>>