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'There's no job security - coaches rent houses, they don't buy them'

(Photo by RC Toulon)

It’s weird how small the rugby world can be. Toulon welcome London Irish to Stade Mayol on Sunday for a European Challenge Cup quarter-final that will have a strong Cork flavour to it with James Coughlan now the defence coach at the Top 14 club and Declan Kidney the director of rugby at the Exiles. 

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It was way back in 2006 when Kidney gave Coughlan his Munster No8 debut. Sixteen years later, they are on opposite sides of an Anglo-French duel that is being served up on TV ahead of the afternoon’s main event, the Champions Cup quarter-final in Paris featuring Racing and Sale. 

We all know the ins and out of the venerated Kidney, the two-time European champion who went on to coach Ireland to the 2009 Grand Slam before resurfacing at the Irish in 2018 to orchestrate a rebuild that has trundled along incrementally. 

Video Spacer

Scaling The French Rugby Pyramid | Zack Henry | Le French Rugby Podcast | EP 27

We’re joined by an Englishman in the Pyrenees as Pau fly half Zack Henry talks us through his journey from Rouen in Federale 1 up through PRO D2 and to the Top 14 via a stint at Leicester in the Premiership. We hear how playing under Steve Borthwick at Tigers wasn’t the right fit, what Gabin Villiere was like back in his days as a back-up scrum half in the French third tier, how dangerous Chouffe socials can be and what happens when you injure your hamstring and are sent to a faith healer rather than a physio! Plus, Johnnie makes a big prediction about who will miss out on the Top 14 play-offs, we discuss Spain being stripped of their place at the World Cup in France next year and we pick our MEATER Moment of the Week…
Use the code FRENCHPOD20 at checkout for 20% off any full price item at Meater.com

Video Spacer

Scaling The French Rugby Pyramid | Zack Henry | Le French Rugby Podcast | EP 27

We’re joined by an Englishman in the Pyrenees as Pau fly half Zack Henry talks us through his journey from Rouen in Federale 1 up through PRO D2 and to the Top 14 via a stint at Leicester in the Premiership. We hear how playing under Steve Borthwick at Tigers wasn’t the right fit, what Gabin Villiere was like back in his days as a back-up scrum half in the French third tier, how dangerous Chouffe socials can be and what happens when you injure your hamstring and are sent to a faith healer rather than a physio! Plus, Johnnie makes a big prediction about who will miss out on the Top 14 play-offs, we discuss Spain being stripped of their place at the World Cup in France next year and we pick our MEATER Moment of the Week…
Use the code FRENCHPOD20 at checkout for 20% off any full price item at Meater.com

In contrast, the 41-year-old Coughlan is earning his coaching stripes in a very different way. It was 2014 when the home bird surprisingly quit Munster, ex-All Black Simon Mannix offering him the chance to play out the final years of his career in France. 

Eight years later, he is still going strong despite some bumps along the road. He hung up his boots in 2017 at Pau and immediately went into academy coaching at the club. Next came a 2019 switch to Provence to marshal their forwards and then a 2021 move to Brive to coach their defence. 

Coughlan Pau
James Coughlan in his days as a Pau player (Photo by Nicolas Peschier/AFP via Getty Images)

That gig ended disappointingly, but Coughlan was at a loose end for just a single week as Toulon came calling. What has since unfolded has been a roller coaster, some brutal results forcing the exit of Patrice Collazo, leaving Coughlan running the show for a week before Franck Azema was installed as the new boss. 

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Toulon haven’t looked back since. Eight wins in the last ten Top 14 outings have them on the cusp of the title playoffs, a far cry from the relegation anxiety of a few months ago, while the pull of Europe is very strong with the Challenge Cup final set to be staged in Marseille, the stadium down the road that they packed out just last month when defeating Toulouse in the league. 

It’s a frantic existence, to say the least, and when RugbyPass touched base with Coughlan the other morning over the phone, he already had half his working day done as he is habitually in the office at 5am to prepare for when the players arrive. “It’s just workload. There is a lot to do. You have to have everything ready by the time the lads come in, you can’t be looking around for stuff in front of 40 men,” he explained about his frequent twelve hours days.

“We’re really lucky here where we are in Toulon. I come out of work and collect the small fella from the creche and then you go to the beach and just relax, you leave the laptop away and I don’t feel too guilty leaving after going in early. I’d prefer to be in early rather than stay late.”

A father of four, Coughlan’s three older kids live with his ex-wife in Finland except for their summer holidays in France, a time in the calendar where there can be no guarantees about what club dad might be working at. “There is no job security,” Coughlan emphasised. “Oscar, he will be three in a couple of weeks so there is not that stress of, ‘Oh God, we are changing schools’ and all that. But you just have to be ready to move. 

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“You go where the work is so at the end of last season after Brive, you were weighing up what to do and I was pretty lucky, a week later Toulon contacted me so there wasn’t that much of a delay between the two. A lot of guys usually have a season before they get something else so you have to kind of prepare for that as well.

“That is the pressure and sometimes it is not even results-based, it’s about something else. You just do the best job you can and be as professional as you can, be as open as you can to everything and things hopefully work behind the scenes without too much trouble. It’s just part of your life, a coach’s life. 

“One of the best bits of advice I got when I did retire was from Damian Mednis, who was an S&C coach at Munster. He sent me a message, ‘Remember Chuck, coaches rent houses they don’t buy them’. He hit the nail on the head. You try and build as big a story with a club as you can, but you know it is only a passage and there is an end date to all our contracts. You do as much as you can with a club to put them in the best possible position. 

“It’s an added pressure but I could go work in a bank if I wanted stability, do you know what I mean? It is an exciting job, something that I love doing and something I will try and do for as long as I can without harming my real life behind it.

“I would have been a teacher if finished out my college stuff, would have gone into being a PE teacher. Every coach knows that there is a shelf life, so I will do some personal development over the next few years with regard to going into management consulting because we are either teaching 40 big children or we are managing 40 big children. A management/consultancy environment is what I’m looking at long-term.” 

Toulon was a scorching baptism of fire, though. Player unavailability due to international tour call-ups and injuries put the kibosh on much of pre-season and once numerous early-season results went south, Collazo was out the door to be replaced by Azema, someone Coughlan had never met before. That was late October but there is now a very different vibe at the club. “It has been a complete roller coaster, I’ve had a bit of everything,” he said, reflecting on a crazy eleven months. 

“We’d a tough pre-season because we were missing so many people and then the start we had was difficult. But then once everyone was back, Franck obviously came and we have found a rhythm now, the lads have found a way of playing with how we are coaching them. They are happy now with how they are playing and what we are doing and the results are coming good.

“Thankfully we hit it off straight away,” he added about Azema’s mid-season arrival. “I only knew him from playing against him, but we hit it off straight away and it has been great since he has come, brilliant. And I was so grateful to Patrice when he was here to give me the opportunity. I have been very lucky and I’m going to be here for next season.”

What does Coughlan remember from his hectic week in charge when the club were in-between head coaches? “After the La Rochelle game, Patrice decided he was going to step away and I filled in. It opened your eyes to the madness of what it is to be a head coach because you are pulled and dragged from everywhere. 

“It’s a bit of a mad week anyway when a club changes coach in the middle of the season but just the administration stuff, the press obligations, organising the medics, the buses, everything that goes into it… you do have staff behind you but you’re involved in all those meetings so it’s a really heavy load for the head coach. It gave a good insight into what goes on.”

Coughlan’s fluency in the language was a comfort throughout. “I did my Leaving Cert in ’99 and moved to France in 2014, it wasn’t like the French was rolling off the tongue. I could ask for a coffee, that was about the size of it. But everything at Toulon is French. The English is more just to translate for Eben (Etzebeth), for Quinn Roux and a couple of the English lads.

“I made a big effort when I came initially to France to speak French. Luckily, I roomed with a Georgian lad when I moved to Pau. He couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak French so I had no choice, I needed to be able to communicate with him. He had a French exam to do for his visa so I said, ‘Look, I’ll do the French exam with you’. 

“It gave me something to aim towards so by the end of the second year I’d passed that exam, so I knew that my French was at a decent level and everything now at Toulon is in French. To be honest, Niall (Woods, my agent) laughs frequently at how bad my English has gotten because I am in French all day. 

“I’m in French work, my partner is French so when I go home I speak French with Marie and Oscar speaks French with mom. My friends were here a few weeks ago for the game against Clermont, the lads from Dolphin, and they were going, ‘Christ, your accent is no longer Cork’. I’m quite frequently laughed at – my French accent is laughed at and then my English accent is laughed at.”

Coughlan is taken very seriously where it matters, though, in the Toulon dressing roo1m where he says he could spend the day listing off all the excellent characteristics of the players at his disposal. “The big names shout off the team sheet, guys like Eben, he has been amazing since he has come back from his concussion. 

“He is getting better every week with the more games he has played. When you are standing from the outside watching him play for South Africa, you see the intensity he brings and everything but here every week he is driving standards in the group. Charl (Charles Ollivon) has had a really long injury with his knee, he is coming back from a cruciate and has come straight back into the same kind of form. He has been brilliant. 

“Baptiste (Serin) has been the general all year, he has been controlling things and you can see his game management is really coming on and has stood to us towards the end of the season. But the guy who has been here from week one and has been in brilliant form from week one is Aymeric Luc, who signed from Bayonne at then of last season when they got relegated. 

“He has been brilliant all year, has been absolutely outstanding and has got some amazing tries as well. I could be here all day. Gabin (Villiere) has been brilliant since he has been available for us. There are some very big characters and they thrive in that competition. We have been in horrible situations that guys haven’t been used to. 

Cheslin (Kolbe) has spoken about never being in that situation where you are having to make sure the club stays up, but they are used to this competition, they are used to fighting for championships and trying to win competitions, so you can see them thriving now. We have turned that corner and are looking to go and win something now.

“It’s mental, always mental, the atmosphere here is amazing,” he added. “The whole town ties in behind the club. That is a challenge as well because when the results aren’t going how supporters feel they should go they tell you and you know about it. But, likewise, when you win they will tell you about it as well.”

How someone so settled in his Cork hometown has allowed himself to be swallowed up by the intensity of French rugby had its genesis in the atmosphere that used to surround Munster’s big European fixtures against French opposition during Coughlan’s time there. “My life is here now with Marie and Oscar, my life is in France and rugby-wise it’s just that challenge, every week is a different challenge, it’s a cup final.

Coughlan Munster Toulon
James Coughlan dives at a Jonny Wilkinson drop goal in 2014 (Photo by Sportsfile/Corbis/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

“When I was with Munster the big games were nearly always against the French clubs and that challenge is still here every week and I just love it. I love the lifestyle, I love being associated with such an amazing club like Toulon. I never thought that would ever happen and I just love being in France and doing as much as I can with the club to see where we end up.  

“Cork was home but when Simon was leaving, the opportunity to go to France came up. I’d never experienced anything outside of Cork, outside of Munster, and I just thought it would be good for me and the family to experience a different way of life, a different culture. That was eight years ago and it’s hard to imagine it’s so long ago now.

“Pau academy was a great learning place,” he continued, even though it is now years since Coughlan last spoke with Mannix who is back in France in charge of Arcachon in Nationale 2 after a stint in Singapore. “You can make mistakes, you can try things with the academy boys that maybe when you get to a professional level you can’t try because it is so heavily reliant on the results. In the academy, it’s about boys signing professional contracts, not about winning every week. 

“The important thing is you develop lads with regards to being able to play regardless of what system the club is using, whether it is the 1,3,3,1, the 2,4,2, whatever it is, it’s about their basics being always good and that they are able to play whatever system is put in front of them. The French system is so heavily reliant now on the academy boys coming through, there is a huge dependence on the academies.

“Provence and Brive then were very different. Provence is a young club and it was about developing the club but we got stopped in the middle of the season with the covid, so the brakes were put on there. Then in Brive, it’s a well-known club that has won a Heineken Cup and they had just come back up the season before covid, so it was about making sure they stayed in the Top 14.

“We did that and now in Toulon, it is a different pressure again. It’s about winning things, it’s about being as productive and competitive as possible and the objective of the club is to be the best team in France and that is what we are working on every day to be. Different experiences, different pressures but the coaching life is as good here as it is anywhere else.”

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J
JW 2 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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