'I don't want to see it die' - Silence, centralisation and Mack Hansen: Why exiled coach wants to help Aussie rugby

SAINT ETIENNE – Years ago, in the weeks after he was brutally moved on from the Brumbies only two matches into the 2011 season, Andy Friend got some sage advice from an acquaintance.

“You’re a jockey,” he was told.

Friend looked back inquisitively: “A jockey?”

“I’m just a jockey, too,” his Greek friend said, “But I actually don’t want to do what I do, I’m stuck. You’re not stuck, you’ve got a choice. Move on to the next thing.”

More than a decade later, having spent several years in Japan and enjoyed an all-to-brief 27 month stint with the Australian sevens team, Friend left on his own terms in late May after wrapping up a five-year stint with Connacht.

“I’ll tell you the reason I said ‘yes’ [to chatting], because I think it’s really important,” Friend tells The Roar, sitting with a flat white at The Black Flamingos café.

“Everyone sees what we’re doing and goes, ‘You’re lucky.’ I go, ‘We are, but we’ve worked hard.’

“But we’ve made a choice. Everyone’s got a choice to walk away whenever you want, I didn’t have to walk away from Connacht but for our sanity and, for us, we needed to walk away because we want to go home, we want to see our boys. We’ve spent so much time away from all of that.

“We are lucky in terms of being given a good opportunity and we’ve worked hard to get this opportunity, but now we’ve also made a life choice and the life is choice is to walk away from what was a brilliant job and just go and enjoy some of our time when we’re able to do this.”

Andy Friend has opened up on his coaching experience and wants to get back involved with Australian rugby, believing . (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

That opportunity is a stint travelling around Europe in a campervan, riding bikes up mountains and trekking around the continent with his wife, Kerri.

“I’m probably grey, but I’m still in my early 50s, so I’m still experiencing what living is all about.”

Friend, 54, has every right to want to return home.

Of the past 29 years, Friend had spent 15 overseas. There have been 21 homes along the way, too.

Would he change it? Not at all.

After all, so dearly did he fall in love with Galway that he’ll return to the county and throw back a Guinness and whip out the guitar at The Crane before he returns home.

But now, having sworn he will never accept another job overseas, Friend is ready to return home and is eager to jump back into the frying pan which is Australian rugby.

“I will get back into footy, mate,” he says.

But more on that later.

Friend is a deep thinker.

After being a head coach for the best part of two decades, Friend, who has only been sacked in Australia, has discovered that silence isn’t just necessary but essential.

“There’s ups and downs with any job,” he says.

“I don’t worry about being liked, but you just want to run a program when you know people are getting better. When you know people want to come to work and they want to try and work with you. Not everyone in the squad of 44 is going to do that. But if the majority do, then I think they’re doing well.

“To me, the longer I’m in the game, you get to know about rugby, of course you do, but you’ve got to know about people. You’ve got to be prepared to work with many different types of people and try and help and support them as best you can. So that’s what we’ve loved about it. But again, this time, having this time of reflection, it’s just really positive again.”

Andy Friend was sacked as Brumbies coach early in his third season in charge. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

One of the only other times he’s been allowed that time for reflection was when he was speared at the Brumbies in early 2011.

As fate should have it, it was the perfect time to take a step back.

“The only other time I’ve had it was when I got sacked from the Brumbies and we did the big ride for Kerri’s injury,” Friend said, as he undertook a 5000km journey from Cooktown to Canberra along the Bicentennial National Trail to raise awareness of brain injuries, and $180,000 for Brain Injury Australia and Outward Bound following his wife’s bike riding accident.

“I took a year off work then, but six months of that was planning the ride and then doing the ride. The ride itself was 93 days.

“That was just me on a mountain bike in the middle of Australia riding and thinking.”

More recently, Friend was let go ahead of the sevens world championships in the United States and the Tokyo Olympics.

Andy Friend had some reasonable success with the Australian sevens team, including taking out the Sydney Sevens, yet was let go. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Yet, quickly, the jockey returned in Friend and three opportunities appeared on his doorstep, including in China and the English Premiership.

The third he originally missed out on in Ireland, but the governing body’s director of high-performance David Nucifora thought he was better suited to another role within the Union across the other side of the Emerald Isle

After three days of meetings in Galway and a return trip home, he gladly accepted the role at Connacht having once thought ‘why on Earth would you take a role in the west country where the rain blows sideways’?

“Probably the best thing that happened for me was I got to Connacht, I got to get back into the XVs, I got to experience a new life in Galway – and I loved it,” he said.

“You know when you’re going to a club like Connacht, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, you’re going to have to roll your sleeves up and get down and dirty, which is probably the club I’ve always had,” he said.

“I quite like the underdog tag with it and trying to rebuild something.”

It turned out he found an ally in Nucifora, who also was removed because of player power after taking the Brumbies to their second Super Rugby title in 2004.

“We never talked about that. But if you look at the history of it, there was [commonality]. He was let go by the Brumbs, I was let go by the Brumbs,” Friend said.

“I don’t even know why he left Australian rugby, to be honest with you. But we’ve always had good conversations, we’ve always got on well.”

Having stepped into Ireland’s centralised program, which was first set up by Aussie Steve Anderson in the mid-noughties, Friend only has positive things about Nucifora, who has overseen every aspect of the Union’s high-performance rugby.

“I really respect the way David does his work,” he said.

“He took on a massive task over there in Ireland and the proof’s in the pudding. They’re the number one in the world at the moment, the women are on the up with their sevens, the men won a bronze medal at the World Cup; sevens wasn’t even a part of the radar when he took over there; Munster’s just won the URC, Leinster’s always there or thereabouts, either winning URC’s or winning Heineken Cups, and we made the semi-final this year.”

David Nucifora has helped turn Ireland into one of the premier rugby nations in the world? (Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

There, Friend’s Connacht, which included a healthy dose of Australian influence, built so much so that they made the semi-final of this year’s competition before going down to the Stormers in Cape Town.

Friend lists the Australians that have come through the doors in Connacht: Jarrad Butler, Kyle Godwin, Colby Fainga’a, who he first signed at the Brumbies back in 2010, John Porch, David Horwitz, Ben O’Donnell, Byron Ralston … eventually, the other name is reeled off: Mack Hansen.

“Of course, then we’ve got Mack Hansen who is Aussie-Irish, and Mack’s made every post a winner since he got there,” he said.

How then, given several of Australia’s Super Rugby sides opted not to make a play at him after the Brumbies accepted he was behind a few others and didn’t fight to break the bank to keep him?

“He’s just a good footballer. He’s got so much ability that guy and again, unfortunately, timing’s everything in life too,” Friend said.

“When he was there, he probably had a few blokes ahead of him in that Brumbies backline and he got a few opportunities, and that’s when we really spotted what we thought we could see.

“To be honest with you, he’s far better than I thought he was going to be and there’s more to come with him. But he’s a hell of a talent.”

Indeed. But is it because of the environment under Friend that Hansen has flourished?

“Someone said to me, ‘If there’s a legacy you wanted to leave, what would it be?’ And I said, ‘I’d love for players and staff to be able to say, ‘When we came to work, we could just be who we were,’” Friend said.

“To me, that’s when we felt safe and we could just be who we were because that’s when I reckon you get the best out of people. When people know that they can just be who they are, they don’t have to wear a mask and have to try and be something that they’re not, you get the best out of people. That’s what we tried to do.

“I won’t say we’ve succeeded all the time, but I think with a bloke like Mack we’re seeing that. Mack’s just allowed to be Mack and when he’s Mack he’s a free spirit, but the way he plays is a free spirit.

“You’re seeing him doing some incredible things on the footy field. Unbelievable.”

Mack Hansen has proved to be one of the signings of the past five years after a stunning arrival in Ireland. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Hansen isn’t the only Australian doing great things for Ireland, but another Canberran in Finlay Bealham – one of the rugby nation’s premier tight-head props.

With Allan Alaalatoa ruled out of the World Cup and Taniela Tupou injured during last week’s training, Eddie Jones’ Wallabies could do with a world-class tight-head prop or two.

It’s something Friend recognises.

“We’ve let a lot of talent go in Australia, but we’ve got a lot of talent,” Friend says.

“That’s probably the thing, upon my reflection as we travel around Europe, I want to see rugby succeed in Australia. I really do. I’d hate to see the game die in Australia. I don’t think it will die in Australia, but we’ve got a lot of work to do and, in some capacity, I’d love to help Australian rugby just get a foothold again and be strong again.

“We’ve got incredible talent, men and women, I saw that with the sevens. We had a brilliant young group of players and we were alongside the women’s program and they were an amazing group of athletes.

“I love Aussie Rules and I love league, and the Matildas were brilliant, but there’s still room for rugby in Australia. I’d love to be a part of trying to resurrect that and get it back to being a stronghold again.”

The Wallabies react after losing to Fiji at the Rugby World Cup. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

Friend believes the “entitlement” within Australian rugby is one of the many things that have harmed the game and the Wallabies.

But he strongly believes there is hope and agrees with Nucifora that moving to a centralised system, something Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan is hell-bent on achieving, is paramount for the sustainability of the game.

“My experience having worked in the English premiership, Japan, Australia, and Ireland is that the Irish system is by far the most integrated and the most seamless,” he said.

“They call it ‘team of us’ and it’s everyone pushing to get the best out of the national team. And within that you’ve got competition, of course you do, and Nussi [Nucifora] was brilliant in driving that and brilliant in trying to get the balance of the best players playing football, and you need to have your home stream.”

For now, though, before Friend tries to find a role back in Australian rugby, the well-travelled coach has other things on his mind. Not that that necessarily includes going from French city to city to watch the World Cup.

“We haven’t actually planned to get any games, but we were just driving past and thought we’d drop into Saint Etienne and watch that game and now we’re going to go to Lyon,” he said.

“Because we’re in the motor home, Paris is not overly motorhome friendly. I said to the Irish boys, we’re going to struggle to get to those games. I just like being around the town. I don’t need to go to the footy game.

“I love the hills. Put me in the mountains. Let me walk, let me ride.”