Six head coaches axed: Inside Montpellier’s game of thrones

As French club Montpellier round out their pre-season training for the new Top 14 season, coach Benson Stanley is relishing the relative calm that being part of a settled staff has brought.

“We’ve had the benefit of having the same coaching staff from last year,” he said shortly before his side beat fellow French top-flight side Pau 26-5 in a friendly. “And so some of the ideas will be consistent.”

There it is. ‘Consistent’ – a mantra variation on the ‘consistency’ theme beloved of coaches, the length and breadth of rugby. But it had been noticeably absent at Montpellier, a club whose recent history reads more like a daytime soap storyline than an object lesson in sporting success.

When Australian-born ex-New Zealand international Stanley joined the club as defence coach in July 2023, he completed a staff led by Richard Cockerill and assembled to rejuvenate a club that, under one-and-a-half season stand-in Philippe Saint-Andre, had struggled in the campaign after lifting their first, and so far only, Bouclier de Brennus.

Cockerill, who gave up a role with England in the lead-up to Rugby World Cup 2023 to take up the job in the south of France, was initially hired as the club’s forwards coach but was promoted to the manager’s hotseat before he arrived.

He took over from director of rugby Saint-Andre, who had led the club to Challenge Cup and French championship success, but was only ever intended to be a stop-gap coach following the sacking of previous incumbent Xavier Garbajosa in January 2021. Saint-Andre wanted to step back from the touchline into the more strategic boardroom role he had originally signed up for. He’d been looking for someone to step into his boots for some time.

The Cockerill era lasted seven matches, six of them defeats, in a French domestic season that started earlier than usual, then paused after three matches because of the Rugby World Cup.

By November 20, 2023, Cockerill was relieved of his duties, along with attack coach Jean-Baptiste Elissalde. A week later, Saint-Andre was shown the door, along with Neil McIlroy, who had only arrived as sporting director at the beginning of the month.

Stanley remained.

The overhaul was the decision of club owner Mohed Altrad’s associate and former FFR president Bernard Laporte, called in to solve the early-season issues. He decided to rip it up and start again with a new set of coaches on short-term contracts: Patrice Collazo, Vincent Etcheto, Christian Labit and Antoine Battut. Their goal was to stay up.

It worked. Just about. Montpellier secured Top 14 status in a post-season promotion-relegation play-off against losing ProD2 finalists Grenoble, courtesy of a 75th-minute Louis Carbonel penalty.

Job done, Collazo, Etcheto and Labit left soon after. Collazo is now in charge at Racing 92, following another successful commando coach survival mission. Etcheto is head coach at ProD2 side Dax. Labit is doing media and consulting work.

Stanley – and Battut – remained.

But the 2023/24 season was over, with no one in place in key roles for the following and rapidly approaching campaign. Montpellier turned to academy director and erstwhile first-team forwards coach Joan Caudullo to take charge of first-team affairs, alongside a relatively inexperienced staff.

As well as Stanley, in charge of rucks and contact attitudes, and lineout specialist Battut, Benoit Paillaugue is attack coach, Geoffrey Doumayrou has overall responsibility for the defence; veteran Didier Bes looks after the scrums; and Jeremy Valls is kicking guru.

The rapidly assembled staff had to go from a standing start to effective pre-season and campaign-building in a matter of weeks.

“Hats off [to Caudullo] for what he went through last year,” Stanley said. “When you’re a relatively new staff and you’ve got limited time … obviously Joan had a massive responsibility in terms of getting everyone on the same page and the amount of organisation that a head coach has to go through and do it in such a time frame.”

No surprise, then, that – with the same staff selling the same message 12 months later – this pre-season has been much more straightforward than the last. In an interview with Midi Olympique, Caudullo had said: “It’s really nice to have time to prepare properly. We can really go into detail. But it’s even more enjoyable to work with the same staff. We have real shared work experience … everything runs more smoothly.”

Stanley agrees. “It’s been a lot better,” he said of the weeks of preparation before Montpellier kick off their Top 14 campaign against Toulon at the newly renamed Septeo Stadium on September 6. “I think it’s been better for the players: everyone’s playing the same game.”

“The challenge, sometimes, when you’re coaching, is building cohesion and alignment in your staff and among 40 players. Everyone has a view on how rugby should be played. Ultimately, one of the biggest challenges is making sure we’re all on the same page.

“How you play is really up to how you think the strengths and weaknesses of your team are and how your coach sees the game. Having that around for more than 12 months has been really nice for both the coaches and the players.

“It was difficult when Joan first came in and had a very limited timeframe in the pre-season – he got appointed when pre-season was knocking at the door, getting coaches in, a young coaching staff, getting everyone aligned, actually getting it on the paddock with the players.”

No wonder Montpellier were slow out of the blocks. They won two of their first seven matches, one more than Cockerill had managed a season earlier. But the air was different at the club this time around.

“We had a slow start to the season,” Stanley said. “When you look at it now, in hindsight, there’s a certain logic to it, insofar as the players were still bedding in with how we wanted to play the game. As we got clearer, we got better with how we wanted to play, and the results followed.

Montpellier finished the season a heady ninth, with 56 points: four places higher and 12 more points than they had managed the previous season.

There wasn’t necessarily much Stanley could control when the club was in such flux. But he saw his job to present a constant, honest message to his charges. “We understand the pressures, we understand the need to win on the weekend. We’ve got a bunch of players that are out there wanting to do it as well. And it was just, ‘what can I control in this environment at this point in time?’.

“You can’t control what’s going to happen if the president decides they want a change. But I’ve got a bunch of players that want to go out on the weekend and do their best and work for the club, for themselves, for each other, for their families. So it’s really important, as a coach, that you’re consistent with your messaging, consistent in your relationships and consistent with how we try to play our footy on the field.

“Put yourself in the players’ position. They think: ‘Three months ago I was hearing from one coach and he said, ‘we’re going to do this’. And we’ve heard from a new coach, ‘we’re going to do the dead opposite’. Now I’ve got another coach saying something else. I want to be good. I want to be consistent. I want to have this reflex, when I’m under white-hot pressure, that’s my first reaction’.”

While the staff has been settled for the first time in several seasons, Montpellier have had a large turnover of players, with second row Adam Beard, centre Lennox Anyanwu, scrum-half Ali Price, hooker Ricky Riccitelli and wing Donovan Taofifenua notable among 12 new senior arrivals. Australian backrow Langi Gleeson and Argentinian centre Justo Piccardo are expected after The Rugby Championship, while Karl Martin and Alex Masikaba return to the club from loan spells in the ProD2.

Stanley reserved praise for the players coming into the club. “The new players are doing brilliantly. There’s been a bit of a turnover, but that’s part of the life and the evolution of the club.

“New players come in, bring new ideas, new enthusiasm. They’ve all contributed massively. We’re still waiting on a few internationals, but it’s been great having the likes of Ali, Lennox, Adam and others come in and add to the environment.

“They bring what they know from previous clubs, internationals – but they come with an openness to contribute, to understand how things work here. Everyone’s come in and really added something to the environment.”

Hinting, perhaps, of a new future at the club, however, there’s an equal influx of players on academy contracts, a policy born of manager Caudullo’s age-grade coaching background.

Stanley welcomed the prospect of building Montpellier’s long-term future. “Joan has a particular perspective, having worked as a head of the academy. He understands the importance, especially these days.

“We’re not in the days when Toulon were at the top of the table and they had just about any international they wanted under the sun. These days, it’s about your ability to attract and form the best young French players possible. It’s had fantastic results for the game in France.

“The clubs that are really competitive at the highest level, they’ve invested heavily in their youth. Joan understands that. It can bear fruit for years to come.”

In July, president Altrad publicly set a top-four target. Caudullo, meanwhile, has spoken of getting back into the top six. When asked, Stanley charts a careful path through a loaded question. “If you make top six, you’ve got a chance to make the top four. If you make the play-offs, then you’ve got a chance to get into the final.”

But that’s at the far end of the season. “We’re focusing on our day-to-day, how we can still build our understanding of how we want to play the game.

“If we get that stuff right in our day-to-day, then we hopefully get our week-to-week, and that will build in terms of where we want to get to at the end of the season.”