Georgia announce the arrival of two new coaches

Richard Cockerill has added former Premiership flanker Julian Salvi and ex-Canada international Dan Baugh to his Georgia coaching team.

Australian Salvi joins as defence coach, whilst Baugh has been appointed as the Lelos’ Head of S&C.

Salvi comes into the role with six years of top-level coaching experience behind him, initially as defence coach of Exeter, where he retired from playing in 2018, and then as breakdown and contract area coach at Benetton Rugby.

Baugh, a hard as nails back-row player, won 27 caps for Canada between 1998 and 2020, and was until recently head of performance at the Dragons, having previously been at Wasps.

Whereas Baugh played at the highest level, fellow flanker Salvi fell short of winning a full cap – in what was a very competitive position for the Walalbies at the time – but he did play numerous times for Australia A and represented his country at three Junior World Cups.

His frustration at not being able to break into the Test arena led to him leaving the Brumbies, where he won the Super Rugby title to join Bath.

A renowned jackaler of the ball, Salvi had a successful first season in England before enjoying some of the best rugby of his career at Leicester, where he was coached by Cockerill, from 2011-2015.

Working with Cockerill will come with no surprises to the 38-year-old now, but it was different in his days in the Tigers’ back row, as he once referenced in The My Life in Rugby column in The Rugby Paper.

“Cockers was running the show at the time and he demanded a lot from the players. When I look back, I can’t help by smile at the kidology he adopted in those notoriously hard Tuesday morning training sessions,” he recalled.

“He’d always come over to the senior group ahead of a live mauling session and say, ‘we’re only going at it 70% today, just get the set-ups right’.

“He would then go over to the academy lads and say, ‘go at it 100 percent, create havoc and do whatever you can’. As directed, you had pumped-up 19-year-olds boshing their way through and giving you everything they had.

“Initially unprepared, it would always get to the point where us senior guys would just go, ‘right…you’re properly going to get it now’. Most of the time it ended in some fisticuffs. I think Cockers just wanted to see what our reaction would be.”