John Ryan a Poacher Turned Gamekeeper - Life after the Front Row.

After many years as 1st team prop forward for my local side, age and injuries finally caught up with me during the 2009/2010 season and I reluctantly decided to hang up my boots and give my body a rest. After all, aching for 3 days after a game and 3 days after training was starting to take its toll.

As the rugby World focuses more and more on the professional game. Where does that leave the junior game? What is going on at junior clubs throughout the world? Are they still flourishing? What is their future?

Mike Penistone met with Bob Fowkes of Newark rugby club in Nottinghamshire and Richard Gibson of Kenilworth Rugby club in Warwickshire in the UK to discuss the “health” and role of the junior rugby club.

In soccer he is known quite simply as the “scout”. Most supporters have little idea how this man operates or for that matter his name. But his role has assumed greater and greater significance as the financial rewards have escalated from 1000s to millions of Pounds/Euros or Dollars.

In rugby all professional clubs now have a chief scout.

Dusty Hare played 394 games for Leicester Tigers, 25 times for England and went on the 1983 Lions Tour to New Zealand.

He is now the current Northampton Saints chief scout.

Neil Back joined newly relegated Leeds Carnegie as Head Coach last season. In his first season, the club won the Championship and were subsequently promoted. Neil is now in his second season and competing in the Guinness Premiership, England’s senior club competition.  As a player, Neil spent 15 seasons with Leicester Tigers (including 2 seasons as player/Defence Coach), achieved 66 England caps and three Lions tours. He won just about every honor the game has to offer, including a Rugby World Cup winner’s medal in 2003.  After retiring as a player, he spent a further 3 seasons at the Tigers as Defence Coach/Head Coach of Academy.

Mike Penistone is a professional rugby coach. He was born and raised in Yorkshire, England and began his rugby life playing and then coaching rugby league. Living only a couple of kilometres from the famous Headingley Ground, he followed the Leeds league team as a young boy. He coached league for about six years and during this period, he guided the Cambridge University and Great Britain Students league teams, before switching to rugby union in the early 1990s. He was coach of the Nottingham Rugby club for two years and then moved to Leicester Tigers where he coached for six seasons. Around the turn of this century, Mike wanted to experience coaching methods and attitudes in another country and so he journeyed to Australia.

Andrew Blades was Australia’s tight-head prop in the winning 1999 RWC champion team. He is renowned amongst his peers as a ‘professor’ of the dark art of scrummaging.

Bob Dwyer interviewed him on IRB official Paddy O’Brien’s assessment of the legality of both the Italian and New Zealand scrum in their recent international.

Whereas Paddy has publicly apologized for “the public nature of the comments”, there has been no such withdrawal of the content of the comments. www.bobdwyerrugby.com questions a neutral authority on the validity of those comments.

N.B. This interview was given before ITALY V NEW ZEALAND on 14^th November 2009

BD: Nick, how much progress do you feel you have made as Italian coach in the last couple of years? As I know, it’s not an easy job.

Bob Dwyer: Ireland were Grand Slam champions last season in the northern hemisphere. How do you see their immediate future in the light of that success?

Mike Ruddock is currently Head Coach at Worcester Warriors, playing in the Guinness Premiership. Worcester are currently enjoying their best ever season in this toughest of competitions, and perhaps this is not surprising. Mike has been successful pretty much wherever he has coached. He led Swansea to a massive win over the then World Champion Wallabies in 1992 and Wales to their first Grand Slam in the Six Nations Championship in 2005, including their first Triple Crown for 25 years.

I caught up with Mike to ask him about Wales’ prospects for this year’s autumn internationals, the subsequent Six Nations in 2010 and the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand in 2011.

Appointed at 22 years of age, Will Carling remains England’s youngest ever rugby captain. Will has 72 England caps in total, with 59 as captain. At the time of his retirement, Will was also England’s most successful captain, with Triple Crowns, Grand Slams and a RWC final in 1991.

Will has a Corporate Hospitality Company, WCM Ltd and is a partner in leading rugby social networking web-site www.rucku.com.                    .

He speaks here with Bob Dwyer, about England’s prospects for the autumn internationals and beyond.