Aboud Back to Italy?? Who Will Be Canada’s Next Head Coach
A couple of recent topics merit some attention as the year winds down. There’s been rumours circulating out of Italy about Stephen Aboud’s return, we’ll keep an eye on that. Of course everyone wants to know what is happening with Kingsley Jones replacement, at least what’s the process, again something to keep an eye on. We post some thoughts on those topics below.
Aboud Moving Back to Italy??
There was some flutter of excitement on Twitter (yeah I know it’s called X now). Bryan Ray reposted an article from rugbymeet.com, in Italian, that talked about changes in Italy and the possibility of Aboud moving back there. The excerpt of interest in the article, translated to English, is posted below.
By virtue of this role, it is said that Ascione will present a project to the next federal council on December 17, or to one of the subsequent ones. It is also said that he could propose the return to FIR of Stephen Aboud , the Irish coach in the past at the helm of the Academies and the high youth level, brought by him to Italy and left in the Innocenti era. We will see.
Will we find out more on December 17th? I messaged Aboud but he hasn’t replied. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if he did accept, I don’t think he has been a good match for Canada and hasn’t engaged much with the community, hasn’t shared his high performance plans or, as far as I know, done much in the 1 year and 7 months he’s been in the job. In that time on Linkedin, he’s thanked Helijet for a ride, posted the women’s Olympic silver, posted twice about Italian players and thanked Rugby Canada for the job, in that order.
New Coach
Rugby Canada haven’t posted the job Kingsley Jones is vacating on their careers section, so what is the process? “Succession planning” was the only thing we got out of Rugby Canada, so are they going to promote from within, have they hired a consultant? We don’t know.
There has been plenty of banter on the internet, including on this site in the comments section on Karl Fix’s open letter in support of Jamie Cudmore. There seems to be the notion among some that Kieran Crowley was our best coach, since forever. I’ll post two graphs that dispel that notion, they’re from an article I wrote in 2021. Note the first graph, when Canada’s ranking took a nose dive in Crowley’s 2nd term and the line with USA’s ranking crossed, not in a good way. His first term was good, his second term is when it all started going wrong. Note when Ratier (and assistant Cudmore) took over temporarily and got Canada’s best ARC result, the graph peaked a bit and then Anscombe and Jones buried it. Canada are now 23rd just above the Netherlands.
This second graph shows the year to year head to head matches versus USA, all those lovely red lines disappeared in Crowley’s 2nd term and then continued on more pronounced under Anscombe and Jones. Note the highest red lines under Canadian coaches Ric Suggitt and Pat Parfrey. Of course it’s not all about the coaches, the quality of players developed during those times are a key factor but we’re just talking coaches right now.
So who will we get as our new coach, and maybe our new High Performance Director. I would be happy to see any of the following names show up in either position, Francois Ratier, Jamie Cudmore, Phil Mack, John Tait, Damian McGrath. Francois won Silver at the World Cup with the women, stepped in when Crowley left and helped raise Canada’s performance, Jamie was his assistant coach. Both speak french which is important in fostering the Quebec/France connection and building relationships with our top players in France and the clubs they play for. Phil, as coach, has won two MLR titles with Seattle, helped BC win the national title, and is currently national team assistant coach. John, as coach, won Bronze with the women’s 7s, he was in line to take over the High Performance position, he has played professionally in France and Wales. Damian was coach when Canada men won their only 7s series tournament in Singapore, he’s a player’s coach, and very popular with the community.
Rugby Canada have a history of making poor decisions, I really hope they step up their game this time.