For me, you have to go out to play good rugby and enjoy yourself
As he approaches his 20th season as director of rugby at Bedford Blues, Mike Rayer chats to Jon Newcombe about his tenure at Goldington Road, how the Championship has changed and his plans for the future…
BEDFORD Blues have been ever-presents in the Championship and National One, as it was when Mike Rayer arrived as DoR in the summer of 2005 just short of his 40th birthday, and the Welshman has been with them all the way, through thick and thin.
Rayer has been a constant reassuring safe pair of hands, as he was in his playing days as a full-back for Wales, Cardiff and Bedford, in what has been a turbulent couple of decades for English rugby. But ‘safe’ is not how his teams play, the Blues have been synonymous with running rugby during his tenure, and the list of players to have developed their games and gone on to bigger and better things thanks to his coaching is a long one.
Here he discusses the best players he has ever coached, his favourite game as Blues’ boss and how he is approaching the season ahead, which kicks off at home to Caldy on Saturday, September 21.
Do you think it helped that you’d already had a taste of Bedford, having lived and played there previously?
Without a shadow of doubt. I definitely wouldn’t have been here if I hadn’t come here as a player because I wouldn’t have known what the place was like. The fact that it was a big, strong rugby town and the people were passionate about their rugby made my mind up pretty quickly. The kids were a bit older, not so much my son but I had quite a battle to bring my daughter back a second time, and my wife was no problem because she enjoyed it here the first time. Having friends here like Gareth (Davies) and Marie, life members of the club, was priceless. I actually moved into their house when I came in 2005, they were away with the Lions, to help me settle in a bit before I shifted the family here. Gareth was a great man of the club, we lost him only a few weeks ago.
What do you remember about your first game, away to Otley, on September 2, 2005?
The long grass! It was a 16-all draw. We probably should have won but they were really gritty and hung in there. It was a bit disappointing because the club had finished the season before on a high and won the Powergen Trophy and things were looking good for the year ahead.
You followed that with seven wins, you must have thought it was easy…
I inherited an experienced group with a fair few Northampton Saints appearances between them. They were a good bunch and very coachable. It was quite daunting coming from Cardiff U21s/Premiership side and academy stuff to my first real senior appointment.
I think we first got beat at Plymouth, we got absolutely robbed down there. Fair play to Graham Dawe, he was still playing and he came on and turned the tide – he got away with some shenanigans as he always did and would continue to do so for a couple more seasons. It was a tough one to take but we battled back and had a great season.
Quins were in the league so they were the standard bearers, they had Andrew Mehrtens et al. We had some great encounters with them in the league, and lost the cup final to them at the end of the season.
Your first coaching team included Andy Key and Martin Hynes…
They were fantastic. Kiwi still has his hand in at Leicester and Hynesy and I forged a great relationship and friendship from day one. I’d sat opposite him on the bench for Wales when he was on the bench for England in the early 90s, but I didn’t get to know him until about 12 months before we started working together, at Paul Turner’s stag do. We hit it off and I found out he’d helped Rudi (Straeuli) the year before with a bit of coaching and he was with me for the subsequent 15 seasons.
“We set out to make Goldington Road the best place to be on Saturday at 3pm”
How much has the club changed during your time there?
Year-on-year we’ve seen massive progress. We’ve seen floodlights go up, the marquee went up when I first started here, we had a new roof on the stand last year, and all the other bits and bobs. We are investing in our infrastructure and trying to make the matchday as good as it can be, and that is backed up by having over 3,000 on average last season for our home games.
What has been the biggest change on the rugby side of things?
How everyone prepares, from an S&C background to analysis. We’ve got cameras watching training and drones and things like that, and we have video footage of training as well as the games so that’s probably the biggest change. On the field, you still have to do the fundamentals well, the basics, and we don’t stray too far away from that. You obviously have your systems in place in defence and attack but, ultimately, you have to catch, pass and run – and kick occasionally if you are under a bit of pressure. I don’t think that part has changed very much.
Essentially, it is a simple game. There is a lot of data but you do tend to get a good eye and feel for the game. Intuition, I do lean on that quite a lot. It is not always about ‘he’s had a bad game, he needs to be dropped’ or whatever.
You need to have an understanding of the person and why he has had a bad game, and the reasons behind it. Is it something off the field, is it the training week …you have to dig a bit deeper and find the human part of it.
I’m sure you’d beg to differ that you can’t win by playing attractive rugby?
Why not? Why not try? My responsibility is to the board and the supporters and to the town. Myself and Geoff (Irvine, former Bedford chairman, below) set out to make this the best place to be in Bedford at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. And to do that, for me, you have to play good rugby. I’m not saying winning 6-3 is not as important as winning 45-40, it’s both really. But our intent is to play with ball in hand. But during the game we give them enough tools to cope and adapt and win the tight games without many tries in it. But, in my opinion, you have got to try and set out to express yourself. That’s why we all started playing, wasn’t it? If you lose that enjoyment factor you are in it for all the wrong reasons.
Your standout game?
Probably in 2012/13, the year we got to the final and we had a two-legged semi-final against Nottingham. We beat them here (26-17), we played quite well but they hung in there and scored a try at the death to narrow the lead we had going into the second leg at Meadow Lane. That second leg was a special day. We managed to get ahead but they came back at us, Tim Streather scored in the left hand corner and it was game on again. But we managed to get through that (23-21) and there was a great sense of relief. Afterwards, we obviously had a great party.
Your best piece of recruitment in all this time?
Without a shadow of a doubt, Paul Tupai. I signed him for a couple of years and he lasted for 10 or 11. He was a great club man who wore his heart on his sleeve and led from the front. He probably set the tone and the values for where we are at now. There are still a couple of lads who were around at the back end of his career and it has been easy to carry that forward into the next era.
The most skilful player you’ve worked with?
Jake Sharp. He could do anything on a rugby pitch. Some people might say apart from defend! But I tend to look at what players can do, and he was incredibly skilful and could do anything with the ball.
“I have wanted to get somebody in here to be ready to take over when I go”
Are you still as enthusiastic now as you were after all these years?
Yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you there are good days and bad days, like most jobs. But there are worse things in this world to be doing, I take it on a day-by-day basis and I come in and try and do the job to the best of my ability and hopefully that ensures the players can come into a good environment and do what they do well and go and enjoy themselves because that is what it is all about – enjoying good moments on and off the field with good people.
Any sign of progress every year is what motivates me. We have got some new boys this year. Tom Cruse, below, it has been great to see him come in and emerge, and Michael Le Bourgeois has taken his first steps into coaching the last few years, so it is great to see these lads out on the pitch coaching and seeing how the players respond. If I can help them in any way, shape or form, that’s where I am at. We have got a great relationship with Saints, we have some good interaction with their coaches, and it is quite exciting to keep a finger on the top end of the game and seeing what the trends of the game are.
Your thoughts on the season ahead?
We never set too many goals around leagues positions and stuff like that, my only goal is to try and be prepared to win the next game. We’ve kept the bulk of last season’s squad so that’s good for continuity and we have hopefully added a few aspirational and exciting players. We feel it is a good mix but you never know. We spend what we can and hopefully we can have a great season at home and pick up some notable victories. Lots of sides have done some good recruitment. You only have to get on a bit of a roll. Look at Pirates last season, they got on a good roll and finished the season well, and Ampthill the same. I think they won 10 games in a row at one stage.
Is your budget the same as last season?
It is, exactly.
What’s the club’s position on promotion?
I’ve been asked this a lot over the years but until you win it you can’t answer the question, can you? The impossible question is going to be asked around Christmas time (applying for a ground audit) when you still don’t know if you have won the thing or not, and then you’ve got to go into the play-off, and then you’ve got to find a four-year plan. As much as everybody has said it is great the pathway is open, there is not many who could put a four-year plan together to say that they can get to 10,000 capacity in four years. If they spend all their money in the first year they might end up getting relegated anyway. It’s just not realistic. I don’t care what anyone says, it is being dressed up positively and I don’t see why. There has been no indication what the Champ side will get going into the Prem, so it is never going to be a level playing field unless they distribute the funds more fairly.
What would you like to see happen?
I’d like the RFU to go into bat for us here. Give us a chance to thrive and survive instead of making us the scapegoats for the wrong doings in English rugby, whether that be at the top level or the U20s or whatever. Over the years the blame seems to be landed at our door.
We have got ambitions here. Plans have been laid out behind the scenes to redevelop the ground in a small way. But unfortunately over the years we have seen the goalposts moved throughout the season, never mind the end of the season. They are constantly changing the goalposts so it is difficult to come up with any short, mid or long-term plans other than being sustainable, which we have managed successfully over the last few years. We are standing on our own two feet at the moment with very limited funding. But if everyone was prepared to do that (increase capacity) because there was a carrot at the end of it in terms of not only promotion but also a fair funding model, then I am sure more people would have an appetite to have a crack at it.
Still on a handshake contract at the Blues?
Yes, I think I am the only one at the club who doesn’t have one but it is not something that has ever bothered me. I obviously had a great relationship with Geoff, we understood each other extremely well and had some great times. He ensured there was a good handover to the new board and I get on with them as well, equally. Maybe I will get one, one day.
Has there ever come a time when you’ve been close to leaving?
I had a couple of conversations over the years but it has all been about timing, for the whole of my career really. It was never my ambition to play for Wales, it was a dream. The fact that I was rewarded for what I did on a daily basis for my club, that’s how I kind of treat coaching. If someone wants to come and talk to me it’s because of what I have done at Bedford on a day-to-day basis. That conversation happened a few years back but it just wasn’t the right time and place for me, and not the right fit.
Have you worked out an exit strategy yet?
I have been pretty honest with the board. I have wanted to get somebody in here and help shape them and be ready to take over when I am ready to go, or people have had enough of me. I tried that with Alex Rae but obviously he left to go to Coventry, and rightly so because it’s his hometown club and he lives in the city. My next projects are Booj (Michael Le Bourgeois) and Tom Cruse (forwards coach) and hopefully we can make a good fist of it between the three of us. I will know when the time is right.
