The shortlist for Gallagher Premiership director of rugby of the year was announced this week but it is incomplete. The coach who has lost his last ten league games and is currently serving a six-match ban for abusing match officials should be on there.
The fact that Steve Diamond is not listed is in no way surprising. Coaches of clubs cast adrift at the foot of the league table who direct industrial language at referees when his side loses in contentious fashion do not tend to feature.
Judging panels automatically look to the top rather than the bottom when they seek to reward success.
There are different types of success, however. Saddled with an impossible job at Newcastle, Diamond – in his own inimitable way – has squeezed more out of the forlorn Falcons than anyone had a right to expect.
Two wins out of 17 would represent abject failure at most clubs; two wins at Newcastle, with their threadbare budget and the screech of circling vultures in their ears all season, is a mini-miracle.
Johann van Graan at Bath, Michael Cheika at Leicester, Alex Sanderson at Sale and George Skivington at Gloucester will all have dealt with some headaches over the course of the season but when your campaign has been one long thumping migraine, like Diamond’s, then what he has achieved deserves recognition.
By rights Newcastle shouldn’t really have won any games this season.
The Falcons are operating on a budget of £3.5m. The league’s salary cap is £6.4m but with dispensations and marquee player credits the top clubs will be running at around £8.5m.
Diamond walked into the situation at Newcastle eyes wide open but even he must have been taken aback at some of the situations he has been required to deal with.
Their victory over Saracens, considering the cost of the respective squads, has to go down as the biggest upset of the season.
Diamond walked into the situation at Newcastle eyes wide open but even he must have been taken aback at some of the situations he has been required to deal with.
The Falcons’ financial plight meant they were forced to sell off their best attacking player, Adam Radwan, mid-season, to Leicester, following Pumas juggernaut Pedro Rubiolo, who signed for Bristol in December.
The player drain will continue at the end of the campaign with hooker Jamie Blamire also heading for the Tigers, their captain Callum Chick off to Northampton, England Under-20s full-back Ben Redshaw on his way to Gloucester and Radwan’s replacement, Max Pepper, bound for Bristol. Pepper’s younger brother Guy, a breakout star of last season, went to Bath in the summer, with fellow tyros Phil Brantingham and Louie Johnson throwing their lot in with Saracens.
Yet despite the exits of the club’s leading lights, and the uncertainty over what next season will look like for those players that remain, Diamond has kept Newcastle soldiering on.
He has been unable to offer anyone a contract while the club’s future is sorted out. The anxiety must be awful – these are people as well as players, many with families and mortgages – and they have no idea what happens beyond June. Yet sufficient morale remains at Kingston Park for a squad outing to the Premier League darts in Sheffield on Thursday night. If you see anyone in the crowd with a card held up to the camera, saying: “Available for weekend work” that might be one of the Falcons.
It would have been understandable if the players had given up the ghost but that hasn’t happened. They are still putting it in for each other, for the club and for Diamond.
There have been a couple of hidings – Northampton put 61 points on them back in December and Sarries 75 in the rematch a fortnight ago – but it could have been a lot worse.
Two wins for the Falcons – two more than last season – are the equivalent of ten for a ‘normal’ Premiership club.
Two wins for the Falcons – two more than last season – are the equivalent of ten for a ‘normal’ Premiership club.
They also reached the semi-finals of the Premiership Rugby Cup this season. Small beer perhaps but still something.
Diamond has overachieved with them.
This season will however end as it was always going to – in another bottom-place finish for the Falcons. It is their third in a row. Something has to change.
For all Diamond’s efforts, it is simply not possible for them to compete over the course of a season when the playing field is so uneven.
That is why the talk of a potential Red Bull buyout, revealed by RugbyPass, is so exciting.
It is a weird sort of a marriage – cool and edgy meets down and out – but for the sake of Newcastle and the English rugby map it needs to happen.
For the Falcons owner Semore Kurdi, who has put around £25m of his own money into the club and who has had enough, the temptation may be to try to claw as much of that back as possible from Red Bull. They have deep pockets, after all. But this is no time to play hard ball. This is the Falcons’ big chance. Maybe their last chance.
If Red Bull and Kurdi can come to an agreement – specifically around the purchase of Kingston Park – and close the deal then the future is suddenly transformed.
Those clubs who have picked off the Falcons’ promising young talent in recent seasons might find the boot suddenly on the other foot.
The agents to the big names might also find their phones ringing – Red Bull do not do things by halves.
Should the buyout come off, where that would leave Diamond is an interesting question. Is he the type of front man a global organisation who have Jurgen Klopp as their Head of Global Soccer would want?
Quite apart from his disciplinary run-ins, his reputation is a canny bargain basement operator – someone a club on a limited budget could turn to and know he would make the most of their money.
It is safe to assume Newcastle would no longer be counting the pennies under Red Bull ownership. The new train set could be an expensive one. Would they trust Discount Dimes with the credit card?
With what he has done this season, in keeping the club afloat in the stormiest of waters, Diamond has earned his shot.
He's a really solid coach. All his best players have signed for other clubs. Whether he could do much about that seems unlikely but even though Newcastle have improved under him it's hard to nominate him for coach of the year when he's overseen all Newcastle’s talent leaving. Again, I don't think that's his fault but still, it's not been a great season.
Agree entirely.