No to Mark Evans. Good CEO that’s it. We need a proper DOR or not bother at all.

In case you are wondering, this is what he is doing now https://www.westernforce.com.au/global-rapid-rugby-appoints-ceo/

He left Western Force in February 2021 and is back as a consultant.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-evans-b210056/

I was wondering what the dynamic was between Millard and PG as regards the signing and re-signing of players? Did PG do the scouting and just give Billy a list of "wants" or did Billy actually have greater say in the choice of targets?
It's just that my bro said its a shame PG hasn't stayed around to reap the benefit of his signings and this set me to wondering if that is strictly true?

I see Domestos' comments similarly.  Although the personality and method of delivery is very different, COS ultimately comes across as a repairman, similar to Eddie Jones in that regard (only).  Short-to-mid term repair, not long term strategy.

I think you have summed it up better than me..... I dont think COS was ever "Building" anything at Quins.  In truth, we were going backwards. Richards, I think would have eventually won trophies with us and built a squad/culture etc

Richards led us to humiliation in his final season (Bloodgate, and getting nilled at home by Irish in the Premiership semi-final). COS took over a club in tatters, completely changed our style of play, and made them into winners. In every respect he built Quins into a better side than Richards had ever managed. Yes, it went backwards after a while, I won't argue that, but that sometimes happens when you stick around and don't get drummed out because of cheating.

At the very least he deserves to be compared favourably with Richards.

I think that’s a better perspective than Domestos’s but underplays what Deano did for the club. He took over when we were relegated and used the year in the Championship to refresh the squad, bringing through the first crop of academy players who’ve been the spine of the club up until the last couple of years. He put in place a lot of the basics of the style of play, recruited NEv and delivered a squad capable of challenging for trophies.

On the downside, there was bloodgate (although anyone who thinks Quins were unique in those forms of cheating is deluded), there was a wider cultural issue within the club, and he didn’t unlock the full attacking potential of the side.

COS did a lot to fix the culture and added that last piece to the attack (along with some smart recruitment of his own - Big Mo was an exceptional bit of business), and he won us more trophies than any other coach in the club’s history. But he freely admitted that he was building on the basics that Deano had left, and he wasn’t able to build on the 2012 successes (albeit at a time when Saracens’ cheating was really starting to influence results).

I think in hindsight, neither of them was quite enough to deliver sustained success. It would be interesting to see what they might have achieved had we had them with COS in the Millard role alongside Deano as DoR as I think what they brought to the club was complementary, though I have no idea if they’d have been able to work together on a personal level.

What we have now is a bunch of young coaches who are getting success out of our squad, plus a General Manager who seems to be doing the right thing in terms of systems and recruitment. The gap is in having a senior coach who can set the long term direction for the game plan and steer us through rough patches or when the game shifts away from favouring our current style of play. The big question is whether we already have someone in the club who can do that role, or whether we have to recruit - and if we do, how they will fit with a coaching roster that I think we would all be keen to hang onto.

To be fair to JK, I dont blame him. He should never have been offered the job. I blame those that gave it to him.

A number of posters have questioned my assessment of Conor O'Shea. OK. Fair enough. Although i notice that i have a number of supporters.

Well, what about the performance of John Kingston and Paul Gustard?

JK was an excellent forwards coach who shouldn't have been a head coach/DoR. Gustard was an excellent defence coach who'd never been a head coach/DoR (and ended up not being very good at it). The lesson there is... we're not good with newbies.

Oh, and that CoS was at the very least a decent DoR

I think part of the problem is that there are several overlapping roles and different clubs, and different eras within the same club, have cut them up in different ways.

Off the top of my head, the rugby division in a club will worry about a number of things, some of them in conjunction with the commercial division:
1. Facilities and logistics - training facilities, rehab facilities, how to get the players to away games in the best shape
2. Equipment and analysis - video, GPS trackers, analytics around play and training
3. Recruitment and management of coaching staff
4. Recruitment and management of non-coaching support staff - physios, doctors, trainers, analysts etc
5. Recruitment and long term management of players and their contracts
6. Management of the academy player pipeline
7. Scouting of potential recruits
8. Overall talent management and succession planning
9. Coach education
10. Development of the overall playing strategy
11. Development and planning of coaching approach and strategies
12. Day to day interaction with star players
13. Season "block" planning (what's in the Roadmap)
14. Selection
15. Matchday tactics and planning
16. Day to day management of training
17. Team-level match preparation
18. Tactics coaching / playbook
19. Unit-level match preparation (scrum, lineout, maul, ruck, attack, defence, back three)
20. Open play skills and decision-making coaching
21. Setpiece skills and training
22. In game-fitness / pace of play  / tactical periodisation
23. Individual player preparation / fitness
24. Rehab and return to play for injured players

From what I can tell, under Deano and COS, the DoR was definitely responsible for 1-13 (COS said that he was the only person who spoke to NEv about his development, for instance) and involved in 14 and 15 with JK. Deano was also a bit more involved in day to day coaching - but both made it clear that Kingston (as Head Coach) was primarily responsible for the day to day coaching and match preparation (and said that his technical analysis and attention to detail about how to play against different teams was exceptionally good).

The Head Coach has mostly dealt with 16-18, and then the specialist coaches deal with everything down to 22 (usually with parallel coaching teams between the senior squad, the academy and possibly the A team when it is playing). A number of the senior players and junior coaches also double up with coaching duties at local semi-pro clubs.

23 and 24 are dealt by the fitness coaches, physios and doctors.

JK said that when he became DoR, he learned a lot about things like player contracts and succession planning that had not been shared with him even as Head Coach, and also that there were a huge number of things that distracted a DoR from the business of coaching and preparing the team. I think it had been OK under Deano and COS because the former had grown up in the DoR role at Tigers as it developed, and the latter has a background in sports administration - but it was challenging for JK as a tracksuit coach.

So Quins decided to split the role into a more hands-on DoR and a GM role, especially with Women's rugby being added to the portfolio. From what I can see, Millard looks after something like 1-7, did 8 jointly with PG, and then PG did 10-17 with 18 being shared with the specialist coaches (and probably with a bit too much input and conservatism from PG).

My best guess at what's now happened is that Millard is looking after 1-10, the triumvirate after 11-22 with some oversight on the lower numbers. The reason I think a senior mentor-coach model could work is that the critical point where we're likely to need additional input and challenge is in the 9-11 space, but that is only a relatively small part of a traditional DoR's time.