Report: Quinssa Meet the Management evening 2011 Part 1

The first part of the report from the Quinssa Meet the Management Evening with Mark Evans and Conor O'Shea on 2nd February 2011

Q. When will your replacement be announced?

ME. I was interested to see someone on the messageboard say that they knew who had been offered the job, as far as I know they haven’t even got a long list yet . There will probably be an appointment in late February/early March but I don’t know when they’ll announce it – probably the end of March.

Q. Will the management structure be the same under the new CEO?

ME. Yes, I think so, Conor will report to my replacement.

Q. Is it true you’re going part-time?

ME. I’m full-time until the end of February, then I’ll go three days a week for March, my replacement won’t start until the end of March, I’m not going to hang around to look over the new CEO’s shoulder.

Q. Conor, you’re a year in the role now, how are things going?

COS. A lot of things are to do with what Mark has done. We have had no success so far this season, if we take our eye off the ball we could end up with nothing. We have an incredible group of players who will only get better with time. This is the best job in the world, the players go out and do a job – we want a team that grows up together. Who wants to change the sort of players we already have. They are a great group to be around, they all like to be around each other. Over in Abu Dhabi, after the dinner, they just all say around together singing songs together – the fact that they might have got in trouble if they’d gone out has nothing to do with it! I’ve learnt nothing I didn’t expect. We aim to perform in the right way; we can’t always win every game, we can only play to our high standards; if we do that then we’ll win more matches than we lose.

Q. How does your replacement continue to increase the support?

ME. You have to make it affordable; you have to make it somewhere people want to come; but there is no magic bullet, it’s not just creating a winning team, particularly in England. If you look at Sale, when they won the league, they had a small blip in attendance but it went back down again. With Wasps they’ve never really grown their crowds at Loftus Road or High Wycombe – they had a wonderful side and six years of trophies but it’s never really had an effect on attendance. The same could be happening at Saracens too. Any more information than that will cost you about £1000 a day!

To be successful you need to get 15-16,000 in the Heineken Cup and Premiership every week and we’re in a good place to do that. There is some interesting fan behaviour, our forecast is to be up about 800 on last season, so that will be an average of about 12,400, we could get that up to 15-16,000 with five years of steady growth. It is more difficult in the south east where there is a higher churn rate, we have a churn rate of about 900 out of 7500 season ticket holders per year, it’s a far lower proportion in Leicester, Gloucester and Northampton.

Most people go to a match because a parent took them, 25 years ago the average crowd at Quins was less than 1000, so we are a ‘young club’ from that point of view. But we have some things going for us, we started with a clean slate, a high population density locally, rugby has a high profile and we have a good set up. Hardly anyone comes to rugby alone, and 85% come because other people brought them. So we try to encourage people to evangelise and be attached enough to want to share it.

Q. What is the likelihood of Etihad continuing their sponsorship?

ME. I can’t really say anything, but I am cautiously optimistic.

Q. Stade Français get 80,000 at the Stade de France, what can we do to emulate them?

ME. We already do that don’t we? I won’t deny that we nicked the idea of the Big Game from Stade. Max is a very interesting guy, he’s a genius in the way he has changed rugby in France. In one game in 1994 Stade had a crowd of 12, not twelve hundred or twelve thousand but just twelve and that’s in a city with just one major football team. Since then they’ve gone on to win five championships.

Remember they get 80,000 three times a year but week in week out at the Stade Jean Boin they only get around 10,000. You certainly have to admire Max. The scene in Paris is very interesting, Racing Club is coming on and has an even richer backer. It’s great that there are now two very competitive sides in Paris  and that probably hasn’t happened since the 1890s. In sport, unless you have a presence in Paris you don’t really count in France. What Max has done at Stade is incredible, they currently have a few money problems but they are still a strong force.  They do have a lot of home grown players, they have feeder clubs that provide player after player and there are Parisians playing for them now, so their team isn’t completely brought in.

Q. Do you think the money in French rugby is a problem with English players going over there?

ME. We must remember that in the northern hemisphere that rugby isn’t pan-European it’s France and England with a few Mickey Mouse countries round the fringes (and that includes our countries [Mark & Conor’s]). There is a lot of money in France for them to be able to buy in players, but, apart from Toulouse most of the French teams want to well in the Top 14 first. I get irritated by the reporting of £20M playing budgets in France, it’s turnover. Leicester have a turnover of £19M.

A few years ago there were loads of French players over here. There are about ten clubs in France that have a high playing budget, Toulouse can afford it as they have a turnover of about €28M, Clermont can afford it, others have to have a backer.

In England there is pressure to move to stable operations – the Amlin and TV deals are set so the only extra revenue you can get is through the crowd.

COS. If we go head to head with a French team then we won’t get the player. But we have other things that we can offer players that don’t involve payment – there is a network at Quins that helps to keep players loyal – people like you who have a lot of connections. I like to think of the players gaining other skills here, like tomorrow we are taking some of them to the Orange Tree to be taught stand up comedy!

Q. Conor, what is your best moment so far at Quins?

COS. It was the ten minutes after half time at Franklin’s Gardens against Northampton.