Code13 Archive: Mark Aston Part Two

Following on from Tuesday's post, this is the second part of the interview I conducted with Sheffield Eagles coach Mark Aston in the summer of 2011. 

In this part, Mark discusses his plans for the Eagles, some of which have undoubtedly come to fruition since then, with the Sheffield club winning the Championship Grand Final in 2012.


The Eagles now share Sheffield United FC’s Bramall Lane Stadium, and Aston is encouraged by what the new venue has done for his team’s prospects, as well as the way his players have responded to this season’s challenges.

How would you assess the state of Sheffield’s season so far, Mark?

I’m reasonably happy. We’ve played nine games and won six of them, so we’ve got a bit of a roll on. We lost our first league game at Bramall Lane to Widnes, but since then we’ve swept everybody before us. So we’re happy there.

When we went to play St Helens I thought we were outstanding – 52-26 and it could have been so much closer. We just made some individual mistakes which cost us. You don’t give interceptions away against teams like that and win games, but it could have been a little bit closer as far as I’m concerned.

The week after though at Leigh we got a lesson in how to play rugby League. They were clinical and we weren’t. We were at sixes and sevens, and the question was ‘Have we fallen in love with ourselves?’ and the answer was ‘yes’, time to get to reality.

It was disappointing though because we had a really good crowd in. We had all the 31 boxes at Bramall Lane sold out that day, we were on Sky and we turned up with a poor performance like that, which we were a bit disappointed with.

So it’s back to basics, back on the field and let’s get physical, as the saying goes.

I know you were pretty disappointed as well about the game at Halifax. What went wrong there?

That was really disappointing. We’d worked hard on defence all week and defensively we were outstanding. But in the second-half our ball control was ridiculous, our completion rate was something like 35 or 37 per cent of our sets. How they didn’t put us to bed I have no idea.

But there was our attitude, our willingness to scramble and put our bodies on the line for each other which was great to see. But we’re disappointed, we scored three tries to two even though we didn’t have a lot of ball. Again, another smack in the chops for us and we needed to bounce back.

The result against Hunslet certainly seemed to show that things had turned round a bit, especially as the Hawks aren’t an easy team to play against, for reasons we won’t discuss here! Were you encouraged by that?

We’ve been pretty physical with the players because I thought they showed a lot of disrespect last week to the backroom staff, to themselves, to each other. They were disrespectful to how we want to play. There were too many individuals coughing up really poor mistakes

So we hammered them again this week and then they came up with a performance like they did against Hunslet, where they beat them 70 odd to 12 and had three other tries disallowed. They were certainly back to the standards I know they’re capable of reaching.

Who’s been playing well at the club?

Misi Taulapapa is getting back to his best, Quentin Laulu-Togagae is fitting in there as well and Menzie Yere’s getting some early ball and causing problems, so we’re encouraged by that.

They’re quality players, but there’s a lot of quality players around them, like Mitchell Stringer. I named Mitch as a prop against Hunslet, he then played in the second-row and I ended up moving him to stand-off. He’s kicked well and he’s put out a ball that any half-back would be proud of to set up Jamie Cording to score by the sticks with not a hand laid on him.

People say he might have a future as a loose forward, but he’s one of the smartest front rowers in the competition. I love smart front-rowers, the days of ‘not so smart’ front rowers have gone.

Andy Henderson is thirty-odd years old but he’s running about like a spring chicken. He’s infectious to have around the place.

What I’ve got here is a real good group of lads who want to play and they want to enjoy it and play with a smile on their face. We’ve had a few hiccups but they’ve bounced back and we’ve got another tough challenge against Dewsbury this week.

We were disappointed where we finished last year in sixth. We want to be as high as we can be up that top six and we want to do better than we did last year, when we got to the semi-final and got beat. So if we can do a little bit better than that we’ll be in the final I’d imagine.

How’s it going off the field as you look to develop the Eagles’ ‘brand’ in a soccer mad city?

The crowd’s are a bit better here at Bramall Lane, and the atmosphere’s better. You can feel a bit more part of it even if you’ve got one or two thousand. the atmosphere’s brilliant. The facility is one of the best rugby facilities in any competition.

It’s a slow burn. It’s a slow process and we’ve always known that. With what’s happening behind the scenes with the scholarships and the academy, all the performance parts are there in place now. What we’ve got to do is drive the attendance up and we’re looking at ways to do that.

I’ve spoken to Hull FC about the re-alignment of their community programmes to try and get more people in. That’ll come. Where we’re at is how do we get that two and a half thousand attendance that you need to get to tick a box for Super League.

All we can is keep knocking away. What I do know is that if we were in Super League we’d get four, five, six thousand at Bramall Lane.

There are people who were Sheffield Eagles fans who now aren’t because of the merger with Huddersfield. I was at a promo we were doing on Fargate in Sheffield city centre not long back. All the boys were there, giving vouchers out and things like that, and there was a man who hasn’t been to see one of our games since we reformed.

This man had never missed a game before the merger. He went to France, he went to Wales, he went absolutely everywhere, home and away, him and his daughter.

I got talking to him and said the merger ripped the heart out of it I asked if he understood the merger, and he said he didn’t really and I don’t think generally people did. This bloke didn’t understand but I explained it to him and he reacted positively.

Has he been back? He said he would, and I would hope he has. We need people like him, as well as the people who live in my village near here and go and watch the Leeds Rhinos now, which is sad. We need those people to get behind us to help us fetch Super League back here.

A lot of people were gutted about what went on in that time period. Can we get back there? Yes, we can. This [Bramall Lane] is the place to do it. There’s lots of exciting things happening. We do what we can on the corporate side of things. Kevin McCabe (Plc chairman of Sheffield United) is very, very supportive of Sheffield Eagles, which is key.

Article originally appeared at:
http://www.code13rugbyleague.com/2011/06/03/exclusive-interview-mark-aston-believes-bramall-lane-is-boosting-sheffield-eagles/

'Stumbles and Half Slips' by Zack Wilson is available from Amazon.com, published by Epic Rites Press.

Code13 Archive: Mark Aston, Part One, June 2011

As some of you will know by now, Code13rugbyleague, a website I worked for covering the great game of rugby league, has closed at the end of the 2012 season.

I'm very proud of what the website achieved, and so I'll be reproducing here some of the interviews I conducted with some of rugby league's personalities.

First, and it's somewhat topical considering that his team won the Championship Grand Final this year, is Sheffield Eagles coach Mark Aston.

I spoke to Mark in the summer of 2011 following his appointment as coach of the Ireland rugby league team, a post he continues to fill alongside his duties at the Eagles.
 

Sheffield Eagles coach Mark Aston was appointed as the new coach of the Ireland rugby League team last week. Code13‘s Zack Wilson caught up with the effervescent Eagles chief this week at Bramall Lane for a chat about Ireland as well RL in Sheffield, Yorkshire’s only rugby league ‘expansion’ city.

In today’s Part One, Mark talks about the challenges of his new role with the Irish. Read Part Two on Friday for his thoughts on the Eagles’ campaign so far…

Congratulations on the appointment Mark. What’s first on the agenda for the job?

I’m on my travels this weekend to Dublin to look around the place. They’ve got a final going on, the Inter-Province final, so I’m going to have a look at the standard of that and see what’s around there.

On Sunday morning I’m actually going to do a bit of a session with the Ireland ‘A’ squad – the Wolfhounds – and have a look at some of those guys.That’s the squad drawn from the domestic league and things like that. So I want to have a look at what it is and where it is and get my own ideas of the standard and, I guess, the task in hand.

What is the appeal of the job? What drew you to the post?

It’s the challenge. Looking at it, it’s like where I was ten years ago with Sheffield Eagles. That’s how I look at it. We had nothing and at least Ireland have got a squad of quality players in there. They dipped last year and they weren’t happy with the standards and performances, but they weren’t happy on a number of other things as well. I aim to resolve those and build a professional environment there and challenge them to be the best they can be.

What do you see as your main tasks?

Structures are a big thing that need looking at, as does coaching over there. I’m not going to be there every week coaching week in and week out, so we need to make sure that we get the structures in place. We need to look at the identification of the Irish squad. I’ve just spoken with Scott Grix, to see about getting a coffee with him and finding out some of the issues they’ve had over the last couple of years. And also making sure that he’s on board, because he was the skipper last year.

It’s not a quick fix, it’s something to build to.

Talking about that, there’s been some high-profile defections from the Ireland squad recently, such as Ben Harrison and Chris Bridge. Have you got a plan for counteracting this kind of draining of talent?

We’ve got to find the next generation. That’s the challenge. What I’m amazed about with Ireland is that they’ve go the senior squad, but underneath the senior squad they’ve got an amateur squad, and I think there’s something missing there like an academy to put in place.

Have any new players expressed an interest in playing for Ireland after your appointment?
I’ve got one here at Sheffield – Vinny Finegan. He’s Irish and he’s put his hand up and said he wants to be part of it. One of the things I’ve always spoken about is getting the youth. Are those players who put up their hands and were part of the 2008 World Cup going to be part of the 2013 World Cup? If they are, then we’ve got four games this year and they’ll have to be putting their hands up for those as well.

You’ll be taking on England, Australia and Fiji at the next World Cup. That must be an exciting for challenge for you?

Fantastic! How good is that for three games? If you want to be on the big stage, then they’re three nations you want to be playing. I’m really looking forward to it, and the guys should be too, but I want them to be preparing now and I want them to feel that when they come into the environment it’s a professional, respectful and disciplined environment.

If we get that right, then look at the players Ireland have got. The Grix brothers, you’ve got people like Pat Richards. There’s others around – Tyrone McCarthy and Tim Bergin. I want the kids who are going to be around for the next few years.

What Ireland is is a passionate nation. That’s what we want in the camp, that passion and pride. Has the sport been going for a few years? Yes, but is it established to the extent it should be? No, and we certainly aim to do that in the next few years. If I can be part of that then I’ll be extremely proud. I just see so many similarities between where Ireland are at now and where I was at Sheffield ten years ago.

I’m sure there are some quality players who are underneath the radar as well. They probably fill the form in and just put England down without thinking whether they’ve got any Irish ancestry. There’s only so many people can play for England, and at the end of the day  we want to give opportunity to players.One of my first jobs is to speak to all the heads of youth and find out who actually who is available and capable of playing for Ireland.

Are there are any of Irish RL’s past greats who will be helping out at all? I’m thinking particularly of Brian Carney or Barrie McDermott, though there are many others.

It’s a clean deck at the moment. There’s me in post, and I’ve got to have a look at who I want to be involved. I know who I want to fetch as my assistant -there’s no dount about that. Whether he can commit to that is something that we have to try and resolve over the next week or so. If he can’t, then it’s Plan B I suppose.

What do I see for Brian and Barrie Mac and Terry O’Connor? I had a meeting with Barrie last week about it, and he’s still very supportive of the Ireland team. He wants a new environment. He wants a professional and disciplined environment. That’s what I want. So I can see all three of them having some sort of ambassadorial role, or just being about the place. Obviously they won’t be involved in a coaching role, but they’ve got massive commitments already.

What is your strategy for getting more first generation Irish born and raised players into your group?

Of course we have to do that. I’ve been looking at the list of players they’ve had over the last few years, and who do I want to keep and who interests me and who do I think is going to be around until the 2013 World Cup. We’ve already got people like Tim Bergin (born in County Laoise) in the environment, so I’m looking to see who else is around.

What really does interest me is the academy over there, where a couple of weeks ago some of the Super League clubs went over and the players that had come through the Provinces there, in the academies, they got them together. And I believe that St Helens took a couple on trial, Hull FC took one and I believe Wigan have taken another one. Those people interest me. What does that potentially give my squad? Pride and passion. Maybe they couldn’t quite make it in rugby union, but could they in rugby league? I guarantee you that there will be some skilful and very decent rugby league players there.

Are you eyeing up any rugby union converts at all?

There’s a lot of people in the rugby union system over there. They come through the school environment and go into the academies. But the Ireland RU only keep the cream of the cream. So what happens to the rest? I think those players are highly skilled and they’ll have good habits, good systems and that. Can we transfer their skills into rugby league? I’m sure we can. It’s got to be a lot easier changing from rugby union to league than vice versa. So they do interest me.

I want to build a programme of work over there where we can get an elite training programme, where some of those kids might come over to England for work placements. They might go to Sheffield Eagles, they might go to Wigan, they might go and have a week or a month at a professional club and see what it’s about and smell the Super League environment and see what it’s like to train with the first team and see the intensity. That’s one of the challenges of the job: to see if we can turn some of these rugby union people into rugby league players, and even international players. If we can get one or two of them, then you get three or four, then you can start talking about profile and raising the awareness of Rugby League  Ireland.

If we can get that then people will buy into the concept of what we’re trying to do. We need to drive the pride and the passion into rugby league in Ireland and say: “We want Irish people playing rugby league for Ireland.”

Look at what Leinster has done in rugby union. They used to be run by one man and a dog and they used to just get a couple of hundred people watching. Now they’re up to tens of thousands in the crowd week in and week out. People get behind a winning team. That’s what we’ve got to deliver.

That’s why I want to get over there and have a look. Show me what Ireland has got and what I can work with. I want to make Ireland proud of their international rugby league team. The talent is out there, we’ve got to convince them that rugby league is a great game.

Article originally appeared at:
http://www.code13rugbyleague.com/2011/06/01/exclusive-interview-mark-aston-looks-to-build-new-base-for-ireland-rl/