Harlequins boss pulls no punches on club's key failing

Harlequins CEO Laurie Dalrymple says the constant churn of head coaches has contributed massively to the club’s on-field decline.

Since Conor O’Shea left for Italy in 2016, the London outfit have had six men in charge, with none lasting more than two-and-a-half seasons at the helm.

John Kingston stepped up to fill the vacancy left by O’Shea before leaving the club in 2018. He was then replaced by Paul Gustard, who shook things up, for good and bad, only to have his time in south-west London also cut short.

Billy Millard led the coaching group for the second half of the 2020/21 season, which culminated in Harlequins becoming champions of England for the second time in 2021.

Tabai Matson then came in from the Chiefs and held various roles, including head coach, before taking on a new challenge in Japan, which led to Danny Wilson’s appointment.

Wilson lasted two years at the helm but was then poached by the WRU after impressing whilst on secondment with the men’s national team as forwards coach on the summer tour to Japan.

This prompted another change on the eve of the current season, with Jason Gilmore being promoted from his defence coach duties to take on the senior coach role.

Harlequins have only won three of the 15 games in all competitions on his watch, which prompted the club to put out a statement to supporters earlier this week, acknowledging that results haven’t been good enough.

Talking to the Times’ Ruck podcast this week, Harlequins CEO Laurie Dalrymple said it’s crucial they get their next head coach hire right.

“This has probably been one of our biggest failings, or one of the areas we’ve got wrong over the last few years,” he said.

“The number of head coaches we’ve had come in and not be sustainable is ultimately probably been the biggest reason why we’ve got so many wrinkles now in our programme, because it feeds off everything – our recruitment, our retention plan, it feeds off our game model, it feeds off our training week, it feeds off ultimately the culture and the environment of the group. So everything ultimately stems back to the one decision we make around who we have as head coach.

“We have made decisions with good intentions in recent years, with good due dilligence, but for various reasons one or two of those haven’t worked out,” he added.

“We lost one right at the start of the season because he was head-hunted to go somewhere else, and there were various reasons for the previous one behind that. But the consistent theme is we haven’t had someone in that seat for long enough to give that person the ability to make a strong enough and consistent longstanding imprint on the programme.

“By changing it, with the frequency that we have, it’s had a massive knock-on effect to eveyrone else,” he added.

“We are going through a process, and I understand why everyone wants to know what that looks like and who it looks like and who it may be on a broader sense, but we have to get this one absolutely right.”