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Ex-England forward Palmer wants to follow Alex King into Premiership coaching role from France

Tom Palmer in 2012 (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Tom Palmer, the former England, Wasps and Gloucester lock, completed a remarkable clean sweep of domestic and European titles and is hoping to be the latest player to launch an English coaching career from France. Fellow ex-Wasps player Alex King, the former Clermont and Montpellier assistant coach who helped Northampton win the 2013-14 Premiership, has just been appointed as Gloucester’s attack coach while in January, Ian Vass swapped the defence coach role with Montpellier to do the same job at Northampton.

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Also in France is Joe Worsley, the former England and Wasps World Cup winner, who has spent his coaching career in France and is currently with Castres after seven years with Bordeaux. Rory Teague, who has just been axed by Gloucester, also spent time at Bordeaux with former Bristol flanker Joe El-Abd coaching at Castres and Oyonnax while at the very top of the sport in France, Shaun Edwards is the national team’s defence coach having crossed the Channel after helping turn Wales into Europe’s top team.

Palmer is fluent in French having played for Stade Francais and Bordeaux and also spent a season in Italy having won 42 caps for England. He is currently the defence and assistant forwards coach at Rouen, working alongside head coach Richard Hill, the former England scrum-half and captain, who has enjoyed a long coaching career across the Channel.

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While Hill appears happy to continue operating in France, Palmer admits following King back into English rugby would be his target after gaining more experience of life in the Pro D2, the second flight of the French professional rugby system. Rouen were facing the drop before the season was ended due to the pandemic but Palmer is confident of a better showing when next season gets underway thanks to the arrival of new players including Carl Fearns from Lyon, Phil Swainson (Harlequins), James Johnston (Brive) and Marvin Woki (Tarbes).

Palmer’s playing career brought a Powergen Cup win with Leeds, the Premiership and Heineken Cup in Wasps colours and the European Challenge Cup while at Gloucester and he keeps a close eye on the state of the Gallagher Premiership where King will be working with outside half Danny Cipriani, another ex-Wasps favourite.

The 41-year-old Palmer told RugbyPass: “I would love to come back and coach in England but there are certainly more opportunities in France because of the two full-time professional leagues and being bilingual is useful. I am doing my French coaching diploma which is similar to Level 4 in England and it is something you need in France. It is the equivalent of a degree.

“I am really enjoying my coaching at Rouen and when I signed for Treviso it was to run the line out, but I ended being the player coach and was sort of thrust into it. I really enjoyed the experience and decided that I wanted to coach after my playing career ended and then I went to Bordeaux and got more experience and then a year in Aurillac and this is my second year with Rouen.

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“We have signed some good players like Carl Fearns, James Johnston and Phil Swainson for next season. The problem coming up to Pro D2 into this season was the timing of play-off system.

“It means you don’t know if you are going to get promoted to Pro D2 until you win the final in the middle of June and then you have to go out and try to sign players.

“That was a really tough ask last summer but we have now added some real quality to our group. With the ending of the season due to the pandemic it has meant we have also been able to have a proper pre-season rather than finishing in June and then back into it at the end of August.

“The idea that training is broken up by a nice glass of wine is long gone in French rugby, however, being a Pro D2 team the infrastructure isn’t as good as say the Premiership but we have a great coaching staff and we are building quite well.

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“Richard Hill is the head coach and the coaching is bilingual because we have a number of players who speak English. We had a bad run in January and February losing matches by a point in the final minutes and so the break has helped.”

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J
JW 3 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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