D-day looms for Glaws and coach Ryan

Wednesday is d-day for Gloucester and coach Dean Ryan as owner Tom Walkinshaw is set to announce the result of his end-of-season review. He completed the job at the end of last week, and has given himself until midweek to come up with and announce his answers to the problems that caused Gloucester’s season to end in tears.

There are a number of alternative ways TW (right) can act to try to ensure that Glaws are transformed from frustrating also-rans into winners, but none of them is easy.

Perhaps the most obvious courses of action are:

   1.     Sack Ryan and appoint a new coach, with a new backroom staff. Not as easy as it sounds because DR is on a long-term contract and it would cost a lot of dosh to pay him off. That, of course, is TW’s fault because he chose to give the coach a lengthy contract when he was promoted to succeed Nigel Melville.
   2.     Appoint a boss man as director or rugby ABOVE Ryan in the Kingsholm hierarchy, leaving him to look after team affairs while the new man actove.s as figurehead. Problem here is that DR might not accept such a move and could even consider “constructive dismissal” action in response.
   3.     Appoint a new coach to run the team and push Ryan “upstairs”. This idea has the same inherent problems as 2 above and he also regards himself as a coach rather than a DoR.

These are the sort of problems football clubs, or at least unsuccessful ones, face all the time and that is why there are a lot of very rich, but very idle, ex-football managers playing a lot of golf round the country.
Whatever he has decided to do, Walkinshaw needs to do it quickly to allow the coach – whoever he is – to catch up with the clubs who are way ahead of Glaws in building their squads for next season.
Otherwise, 2009-10 could turn out to be just as frustrating as 2008-09.