Rugby Union: Ruddock Resigns As Coach of Wales

Mike Ruddock last night resigned as the Wales coach, 11 months after presiding over their first grand slam for 27 years and less than two weeks after saying that he had shaken hands on a new contract to take him beyond next year’s World Cup. His assistant Scott Johnson will take over for the rest of the Six Nations championship.

The ostensible reason given at a hastily convened media conference at the Millennium Stadium last night for the 46-year old Ruddock’s abrupt departure was that the coach, who took over from Steve Hansen in the summer of 2004 on a two-year contract which was due to expire in May, was standing down for family reasons.

The essential factor was a breakdown in relations between Ruddock and some of his leading players which manifested itself last week when the squad, in defiance of the coach’s instructions, refused to be interviewed by the media until a journalist, who had written an article in the match program at Twickenham the previous weekend championing the outspokenness of the Wales centre Gavin Henson, left the building.

It is understood that a delegation of senior players, led by the captain Gareth Thomas, last week met leading Welsh Rugby Union officials to relay their disenchantment with the coach. Their concerns, which echoed those of the Wales assistant coach Scott Johnson last autumn, centered around playing strategy and the way ahead.

When Ruddock, who had been overlooked for the Wales job on two previous occasions, took over 21 months ago, he inherited a playing squad and a management team which had been in place for a couple of years. He made few changes beyond reinstating Clive Griffiths as the defense coach, capping the flanker Ryan Jones, who was one of the successes with the Lions last summer and recalling Henson, who had fallen foul of Hansen.

It was not a set-up molded in Ruddock’s image, and the upshot of last week’s squad stand-off with a journalist was that when Ruddock asked them to follow him, they stood four-square with their captain and suggested to the coach that he join their boycott. Once Ruddock went into the interview room without them, he was on his own and last Sunday’s victory over Scotland was never going to be enough to restore his authority.

Ruddock met with the Welsh Rugby Union chief executive Steve Lewis yesterday morning having given no indication before he went in that he was considering resigning. When he emerged an hour later, he was a former Wales coach. "Mike told me that he would not be seeking a renewal of his contract for personal and family reasons, even though we had reached agreement on its terms," said Lewis. "We both agreed that it would be in his and the team’s best interests if he stepped down immediately. This has come as a shock."

Ruddock is the third Wales coach in the last 16 years to leave during the course of a championship, but John Ryan, in 1990, and Graham Henry, in 2002, left after record defeats rather than a victory. "We were put in a position of crisis today but we have dealt with it, said the WRU chairman David Pickering. "Mike is a wonderful coach and a true gentleman." Pressed whether he had wanted Ruddock to stay, he went on: "That is hypothetical. Scott Johnson will lead us for the rest of the championship and we will then sit down to discuss the future."