Top 5 best coaches in the world....

Speculation over Kidneys inevitable resignation and Saint-Andre's- from hero to zero -6 Nations, has caused me to think , how important is a coach in International rugby!Give your top 5 best coaches of the professional era.....
1.Schmidt
2.Henry
3.Woodward
4.Crazy scientist (French coach pre-Lieverment)
5.Guy Noves

Woodward - not after his lions farce. He was lucky with a great group of players for England - he has been shown to be a numpty since

Jake White most be up there

For France. I would select Guy Noves.

For Ireland??? Dont know. really no idea.

TJ wrote:Woodward - not after his lions farce. He was lucky with a great group of players for England - he has been shown to be a numpty since

Have to agree with you, but he still remains the only coach, who has led a Northern Hemisphere team to winning a world cup.Which has to be credited !

1. Gatland
2. Robin Mcbryde

Jacques Brunel
Assume crazy scientist is Bernard Laporte? Dont rate him that much as he's really interested only in forward orientated game. Good leader that gets respect off his players but lacks creativity.

Gatlands got to be in with a shout:

Three premiership titles
One Heineken Cup
One Parker Pen Cup
Two 6N Grand Slams
RWC Semi Final
One Lions tour ;-)


Pretty good record...

A coach is only really as good as the players he has to work with, but any coach that has a history of making average players play above themselves is very talented.

1) Warren Gatland
2) Graham Henry

That's it for me to be honest.

I'd not ranking Woodward sorry, all he ever did was copy the rugby league coaching blue print and adopt it to rugby union. He was the first to do it, but it was hardly pioneer stuff someone else would of thought of it sooner or later.

He brought in David aldred as a specialist kicking coach, he had a specialist forwards coach, a defense coach etc.

One trick pony, who was lucky enough to have a lot of very, very talented players at the peak of their powers, though one world cup and a grand slam is hardly much of an achievement for a team cointaining the likes of Martin Johnson, Jason Robinson, Jason Leonard, Richard Hill, Lawrence Dallagio, Johnny Wilkinson. Etc, they blew 3 grand slams from bottling it in the final game.

Shifty wrote:A coach is only really as good as the players he has to work with, but any coach that has a history of making average players play above themselves is very talented.

1) Warren Gatland
2) Graham Henry

That's it for me to be honest.

I'd not ranking Woodward sorry, all he ever did was copy the rugby league coaching blue print and adopt it to rugby union. He was the first to do it, but it was hardly pioneer stuff someone else would of thought of it sooner or later.

He brought in David aldred as a specialist kicking coach, he had a specialist forwards coach, a defense coach etc.

One trick pony, who was lucky enough to have a lot of very, very talented players at the peak of their powers, though one world cup and a grand slam is hardly much of an achievement for a team cointaining the likes of Martin Johnson, Jason Robinson, Jason Leonard, Richard Hill, Lawrence Dallagio, Johnny Wilkinson. Etc, they blew 3 grand slams from bottling it in the final game.

You could say the same for Henry in terms of bringing in excellent coaches in specialist areas. Woodward was light years ahead in terms of preparation and conditioning etc. - perhaps not a great coach but a very good head coach/manager type.

Surely if he was the first to do it, it is still pioneering no matter if you think it would have happened later down the line Shifty? Also despite him "copying league" which I dont think is true was tremendously effective which still makes him a good coach.

Henry's contribution was to introduce the "Pod" system with Wales in 1999 years before anyone else thought of it. The trouble was no one in Wales had any idea how to play to that system and was unsuccessful yet now the word "Pod" is widely used in rugby terms.

You only have to read the autobiographies of some of the Welsh players at the time that tells you they really didn't see the point in planning 3-4 phases ahead, because they had no idea what would happen in that time and what the defensive line of the opponents was, they wanted to play heads up rugby and react to what was in front of them.

Yet when Henry went to New Zealand with his new system New Zealand were remarkable.