The former Ospreys head coach is the favourite to be Wales’ next head coach
In what turned out to be Steve Tandy’s final campaign at the Ospreys, the problems were mounting up at an uncomfortable rate.
Results were going against them. The pressure was ramping up. One of their players even ended up being bitten by a lion in South Africa. It never rains, but it pours. With all that piling up on the shoulders of the coach, he called his players into a meeting one Monday, intent on finding a way to stop their season being completely derailed.
“We’re not leaving this room until we all start enjoying our rugby again, myself included,” was the gist of the honest ice-breaker from the first-time head coach.
Coming away from that meeting, it felt as though a corner had been turned. In the end, it mattered little.
Months later, in early 2018, Tandy’s services at the Ospreys were no longer required – dispensed with after failing to overcome Clermont away from home to keep their hopes of reaching the Champions Cup quarter-finals alive.
For context, Clermont at the time were the beaten finalists the season before, having won 31 out of their last 32 home matches in Europe. In the Ospreys’ pool too were reigning champions Saracens, just to make life that little bit harder.
And yet, the Ospreys had gone toe-to-toe with both, drawing with Saracens in Swansea and losing to the English club by just two points away from home. In the end, they ended up missing out on the quarter-finals by just a few points.
As Tandy mulls over a return to both Wales and being a head coach, understood to have been offered the chance to replace Warren Gatland, it seems fitting to look back on the last time the former back-row was the main man in charge.
The reaction to Tandy being the front-runner – as exclusively revealed by WalesOnline earlier this month – has not exactly been effusive on social media. It has, in all honesty, been met with scepticism.
Many have pointed to his record with the Ospreys and the fact that he hasn’t been a head coach since, having been in charge of the defence with the Waratahs, Scotland and British & Irish Lions in the following years. Sign up to Inside Welsh rugby on Substack to get exclusive news stories and insight from behind the scenes in Welsh rugby.
One coach within the game has already said privately that it is “wild that people don’t think Steve would do a good job”. They also stressed that the Ospreys was Tandy’s first job, one he was thrust into at the age of 32.
‘A shocking decision’
Those who played under Tandy in Swansea are equally as enthusiastic. Former Wales hooker Scott Baldwin is paving his own way in coaching now, taking charge of Bridgend just like Tandy did himself 15 years ago following his own retirement.
“Steve is a really good coach,” Baldwin – coincidentally the Ospreys player bitten by the lion all those years ago – told WalesOnline. “I’ve seen quite a few bits that he was poor with the Ospreys.
“If you actually look at his time at the Ospreys, we were consistently vying for the semi-finals in the league until the last 12 months or so.
“He was very good, very straight. He’d call a spade a spade. But he was quick to move on from it. You could have a heated debate, but once it was done, it was yesterday’s news.
“He didn’t hold things against people. His delivery was really good.
“He got unfairly sacked to be brutally honest with you. We changed our gameplan at the time. It was around the time the Highlanders had won Super Rugby.”
Having signed Ma’afu Fia from the Dunedin-based outfit after their Super Rugby title success in 2015, the Ospreys were then trying their best to replicate the way the Jamie Joseph’s side were attacking too.
Getting to the touchline, then firing back long bullet passes from nine to the first forward. In theory, it gave you gainline, speed of ball and the ability to play on top.
But, for the Ospreys, it just wasn’t clicking – leading to some soul-searching. Senior players lamented the fact in meetings that, while it’s easy to spot the space in reviews once you hit the pause button on the laptop, that isn’t so apparent in-game when you’re not winning collisions.
Fia, familiar with what had worked in New Zealand, pointed out that the Highlanders had All Black scrum-half Aaron Smith to fizz passes around. Tandy, reviewing the situation, chose to sit down in a room with his players, looking to find the love of rugby again.
“We just had an honest conversation about howthe Ospreys fundamentally played the game,” explains Baldwin. “I loved that he was open about the fact it wasn’t working.
“He had the awareness to change and understood the human side of it.”
After all, Tandy had already tweaked the Ospreys’ energy-sapping blitz defence from his playing days – the one that laid the foundations of the 2008 Grand Slam – to a more zonal style of defence with Brad Davis that has informed his coaching with Scotland and the Lions.
“After that meeting, we had a decent run of form,” says Baldwin. “We played Clermont away and Steve had to win to keep his job.
“He had to win to get out of the group in Europe and keep his job, away to a top side. If you look at the build-up, we drew with Sarries at home, lost away to them by two points and lost narrowly to the Scarlets.
“I’ll never forget that Andrew Millward (then Ospreys CEO) came down to the Vale to tell us Tandy had gone. I remember thinking that was a shocking decision as we had turned a corner.
“Was he ready to do the job under the circumstances? I don’t know. I think maybe we overachieved while he was there, honestly.”
The student of the game who was popular with Lions
Having won the league within four months of taking the job, Tandy would never lift silverware again. However, the Ospreys did reach the league play-offs on two occasions and narrowly missed out on a few other occasions – all with the backdrop of worsening finances within Welsh rugby.
The day after their 2012 league success, the club were hit with a winding up order from HMRC over an outstanding tax debt. The Galacticos era was well and truly over.
“To reach semi-finals and make knockouts of Europe, people in Wales will never say we were overachieving, but I truly believe we were,” adds Baldwin.
“The most important thing is he knows Welsh rugby. He’s been through the turmoil. The only question is, if it’s going to be tough for the next couple of years, does he want it?”
It’s a similar sentiment to that put forward by another former Ospreys hooker, Richard Hibbard. “I would love Steve to come in and it would be a fantastic appointment,” he told BBC Radio Wales.
“It is a mammoth task now if you look at Welsh rugby and my only concern is the WRU remit he could be given. This is not going to be a quick fix.
“This is almost a two World Cup cycle and that is what you have to give him. You can’t expect results to improve overnight. He has to build, not just the current squad but also the conveyor belt behind it.
“Until we get that right, it is an impossible task for anybody.”
That will be what Tandy is mulling over right now, whether this is the right time for the job. He has been linked with returns to Wales before.
Gatland was understood to have been keen on bringing him back when he returned to replace Wayne Pivac, having already taken him on the Lions tour of South Africa by that point.
Those on the tour note how popular Tandy was with squad members from all the different home nations when it came to getting his message across and improving them as players.
“You don’t coach the Lions if you’re a poor coach,” adds Baldwin. “People say they want an experienced coach. He’s been coaching for more than 10 years.
“He went to Australia, loved his time there and opened his eyes to another way the game is played. He looked like a different man, like the man who took the job in 2012.
“He looked full of energy and charisma. He’s just a really good bloke. I hate the phrase, but he’s a student of the game.
“He’s very keen to learn and look at different ways of doing things instead of just being stuck in one way. He can adapt his coaching.
“Scotland are a big side. What he coaches there works because they’re big, they’re physical, they’ve got big guys who win the aerial battles.
“They can buy a lot of time in the tackle. They can deliver that defensive system. He understands both sides of the ball.
“I think he’d be a great appointment.”
‘You’re starting. Now f**k off’
Another former Wales international, Alex Cuthbert, believes this could be the next step for Tandy in his career. “We can easily say he’s been a defence coach and this is probably a big role to take on,” said the former wing on Scrum V.
“But maybe this is the next thing he wants in the game. He’s done his dues with the Lions and Scotland. He’s definitely improved Scotland defensively.
“I played against them for a number of years and they used to leak a lot of points. We know they’re very good in attack, but he’s got those attack-minded players to defend as well.
“That’s one of the hard things. A lot of people buy into what he wants his team to defence like.”
Getting Wales’ players to buy into him, if he takes the job, will be crucial. However, just as important for Tandy will be buying into this group of young talent.
As a coach, that is where his focus lies.
“He could be grumpy sometimes, but he was very player-focused,” explains Baldwin. “He was all about understanding you.
“I’ll never forget, he sent me to see someone. I’m not sure what the exact role was. She wouldn’t have been a sports psychologist because she worked with the military.
“But it was around the time of the lion bite. I wasn’t being selected. My head had gone and we’d had a massive argument.
“Anyway, he sent me to see this woman. It was all because I’d gone in and asked ‘Why am I not starting?’. He was quite defensive if you asked that sort of thing.
“The woman explained that it was a defensive question and you’ll get a defensive response. She said I should go in and ask what I need to do to play. It’s the same question, but you’ll get a constructive answer.
“So I went in the following day and asked Steve what do I need to do to start because I want to play. He started laughing and said ‘You’re starting. Now, f**k off’.
“It was a really good moment. If you ask any player who has worked under him, they’ll give you the same response.”
