1
The Owen Farrell conversations Lancaster is most looking forward to
Racing 92 boss Stuart Lancaster has spoken about the challenge of trying to successfully gel former England captain Owen Farrell into a strong leadership group with Siya Kolisi, the two-time Springboks Rugby World Cup-winning skipper, and Gael Fickou, a talisman of the France national team under Fabien Galthie.
ADVERTISEMENT
Farrell, who took a Test rugby sabbatical following England’s bronze medal finish at the recent World Cup, is set to join Lancaster, his former national team boss, in Paris on a two-year deal, starting with the 2024/25 Top 14 season.
Racing are currently third in the league in Lancaster’s first season in charge, winning their last four top-flight games after a five-game losing streak earlier this spring ratcheted up the pressure on the 2012-2015 England coach who moved to France following a seven-year stint as senior coach at Leo Cullen’s Leinster.
Lancaster has now reflected on that mid-season unease in his latest episode of his Leaders on Leaders YouTube series, while also sharing his thoughts on the imminent arrival of Farrell this summer.
Asked what Racing expect from Farrell, the 32-year-old looking to lead Saracens to Gallagher Premiership glory before he exits England, Lancaster said: “He will bring a lot. As a player, he has played for England over 100 times. For me, he gets poor press in England because they perceive he is a kicking fly-half or plays for Saracens.
“Anyone who watches Saracens, the last two years in particular, will see how good rugby he has played and how much of a factor he is within that. You speak to any of the players who have played with him on Lions tours or England players, not one person has a bad word to say about him in terms of what he delivers.
“His understanding of the game is excellent, his quality as a player is obviously excellent. And his leadership credentials are excellent also, but this is going to be very similar to my challenge coming in. Hopefully I’ll help him with that.
ADVERTISEMENT
“How does he get his message across? How long does he take? Will he take six weeks before he starts holding people to account? Will he find his feet straight away and lead straight away? These are all topics of conversation I am really looking forward to having with him.
“We have spoken quite a few times. He has got his Saracens head on very much at the moment but very, very soon he will be leaving Saracens and he will be coming over here July 1 with pre-season looming.
“So with him, with Siya Kolisi, with Gael Fickou who does a lot of the leadership within the French team, what an amazing coaching challenge to try and harness those three players into a strong leadership group supported by your Henry Chavancys, your Cameron Wokis and the other guy, the Nolann le Garrecs who will be future leaders of the team. He will bring a huge amount but it’s not going to be easy, as I found.
“I was speaking to Siya Kolisi only the other day – he has not found it easy. It’s a lot easier for him in South Africa where everyone loves and adores him and he is with his mates who he has grown up with and he misses them.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I said to him, ‘Well, I miss Dublin, I miss Leinster, I miss the players, I miss the coaches, miss the people but I needed to do this to challenge myself and to work out where my own strengths and weaknesses are’.
“It definitely has done that with the five-game losses and loads of other things, and Owen will find that and he will return to Saracens maybe as a player or as a coach – maybe as a player/coach, who knows – he will return far better for the experience because it will expose him in areas and it will make him reflect in areas.
“Hopefully I guess I’d deep down pleased that Andy and Coleen trust me with their son’s development, you know what I mean? So I’ll be there to sort of hopefully guide and steer them as well. We go back long enough. Even though we have not really spoken since I left England, I am sure we can pick up our relationship from when we were together.
“Hopefully there is an advantage in that he knows what it is going to look and feel like. For any player coming to France, particularly when you don’t speak the language that well, having an English-speaking person in the coaching team helps but I don’t think he is just going to speak English.
“Our relationship goes back a while and yeah, it [the recruitment] just happened to be the right place right time. I’m really looking forward to it, looking forward to the challenge of, ‘Can we create a winning team? Can we do it in a year or two years?’”
Comments on RugbyPass
I’ve just noticed that this match has an all-French refereeing team. Surely a game like this ought to have a neutral ref? Although looking at the BBC preview of the Saints game, Raynal is also down as reffing that - so there may be some confusion about who is reffing what.
1 Go to commentsIf Havili can play anywhere in the back line, why not first 5. #10.
11 Go to commentsThe dressing room had already left for their summer break before they ran out in Dublin that year, and that’s on the coach. Franco Smith has undoubtedly made progress, particularly their maul, developing squad players and increasing squad depth. And against a very tight budget too. That said they were too lightweight last year and got found out against both Toulon and Munster in consecutive games. Better this season so far but they’ve developed something of a slow start habit occasionally, most notably losing at home to Northampton who played them at their own game. Play offs will ultimately show whether there has been tangible progress on last year, or not…!
2 Go to commentsAustralian Rugby has been a disaster, by not incorporating learning from previous successful campaigns. QLD Reds 2011 - Waratahs 2014. Players, coaches and administrators appoint there representatives for scheduled meetings, organisation’s agreement’s assessments and correspondence. This why a unified Rugby Union under one entity works. Every Rugby nation has taken that path. Was most difficult in the Northern hemisphere with over 100 years of club rugby before the game become professional. Took a lot of humility for those unions to eventually work together.
7 Go to commentsThough Wilson’s sacking was pretty brutal, it wasn’t just down to that Leinster game; Glasgow had a lot of 2nd half collapses that season, in the URC and Europe, and only just scraped into the playoffs. Franco Smith has definitely been an improvement, some players are delivering far more than they did under Wilson.
2 Go to commentsjesus - that front 5!
1 Go to commentsShould be an absolute cracker of a game! Will be great to see DuPont & Ntamack in tandem once again🔥
1 Go to commentsBest team ever…. To have played? These guys are still pressure chokers. Came nowhere when it counted. What a joke
69 Go to commentsMusk defends anonymous terrorism, fascism, threats against individuals and children etc etc But a Rugby club account….lock ‘em up!!!
1 Go to commentsActually the era defining moment came a few years earlier. February 2002 to be precise, when Michael D Higgins as finance minister at the time introduced his sports persons tax relief bill to the dial. As the politicians of the day stated “It seems to be another daft K Club frolic born in Kildare amongst the well-paid professional jockeys with whom the Minister plays golf” and that the scheme represented “a savage uncaring vision of Ireland and one that should be condemned”. The irfu and Leinster would be nowhere near the position they are in today without this key component of the finances.
2 Go to commentsIt is crystal clear that people who make such threats on line should be tried and imprisoned. Those with responsibility in social media companies who don’t facilitate this should be convicted. In real life, I have free speech to approach someone like Reinach and verbally threaten him. I am risking a conviction or a slap but I could do it. In the old days, If someone anonymously threatened someone by letter the police would ask and use evidence from the postal system. Unlike the Post, social media companies have complete instant and legal access to the content in social media. They make money from the data, billions. Yet, they turn a blind eye to terrorism, Nazi-ism and industrial levels of threats against individuals including their address and childrens schools being published online all from ananoymous accounts not real people. They claim free speech. Free speech for anonymous trolls/voilent thugs threatening people under false names? The fault is with the perps but also social media companies who think anonymous personas posting death threats constitutes free speech.
2 Go to commentsSo if this ain’t the best Irish team ever then who exactly is? I don’t remember any other Irish team being this good & winning a series in the Land of the Long White Cloud. Yes I may rip them often for 8 X QF RWC exits & twice not even making it to the QF, but they’re a damn good team who many think can only improve, including me!
69 Go to commentsNot a squeek out of Leinster for weeks about this match. So quiet. The first team have been quitely building for this encounter under Nienaber’s direction. All fresh, all highly motivated. They are expecting a season’s best performance from Northhampton. They will match that. They will be fresher and apparently they will have 80,000 out of the 83,000 shouting for them. I do expect Northhampton to turn up big time. Not to be missed. On a tangent it is evident how the loss of a few Premiership teams has in some respect helped other Premiership teams and England. More quality over less teams makes the teams better, which has a knock on effect on England. Not the only factor contributing to England’s rise but one of them.
2 Go to commentsOur very own monster teddy bear Ox😍💪
17 Go to commentsThis is might be the most generalised, entitled, patronising, out-of-pocket cultural indictment on a group of people you’ll ever see on what is supposedly a sports publication. I can only assume the author is weak like a woman or homosexual. I’m feeling an incredible range of emotions but I am not quite sure how to express them. I might go beat up a hockey player - assuming that’s okay with Duane and the boys? 🙂
9 Go to commentsBest thing the Welsh clubs could do is apply to join Gallagher prem surely be more exciting matches for there support than they have now.
2 Go to commentsRugbyPass writers are useless! you guys should get a real job because you all suck at writing about rugby!!!
9 Go to commentslooking forward to RWC2027 …. Boks on mission impossible for the Three-in-a-row, ABs to prove they being on par, France wishing to crown the “DuPont-era”, Ireland knocking on the Semi-Door ….. until then we’ll probably have to deal with Weird Ben’s fantasy-RWC23 (fun fact is, the drivel always creates a flooding of comments) …..
223 Go to commentsBen Smith you really make some good points in this article, the Springboks were not close to perfect and good still beat the All Blacks, imagine if they were as good as they were against France what a hiding the All Blacks would have gotten… maybe another Twickenham drubbing
223 Go to commentsIt is a good argument to keep the Rebels for one more year but also isnt this just opening the door as well for keeping them beyond 2025. If they can create some sort of financial stability in the next year and if their performances lift as they have this season then how would RA even cull them after that? It might be the most cost effective decision at this stage and perhaps many people are guilty of keeping relationships going because of the cost to decouple but then again when does that ever work out well?
29 Go to comments