Boden is happy to take on Coventry challenge
STEVE Boden is enjoying being back in rugby in a more hands on coaching role in an environment with people that share the same values.
Father-of-two Boden was this week unveiled as a new member of Coventry‘s coaching team for next season, as an assistant first team and academy pathway coach.
It is only five months since the Yorkshireman stepped away from the trials and tribulations of life as a Championship director of rugby at Doncaster.
But the former hooker, a renowned practitioner of the scrum, has been tempted back in a parttime capacity at a club he believes is as close to Premiership standard as you can get in all but name and funding.
“It’s a full-time club, it’s ambitious and it has got a brilliant fanbase that could easily support Premiership rugby,” Boden, right, told The Rugby Paper, a week into his new role.
“Coventry reached out to me; I know Alex Rae (head coach) really well, we’ve kept in touch since we were at Jersey together, and I know James Scaysbrook and Gordon Ross as well, so I knew I’d be working with a really good coaching team. There is a lot of trust between us, which is crucial in rugby. The staff have gone out of their way to welcome me.
“What they are asking me to do fits in and around what I want to do outside of rugby, so if I do want to come out of rugby again, it won’t be as big a transition.
“I got pushed into a director of rugby role, I wasn’t doing much coaching last year, and it suits me better being hands-on coaching the lads on the grass than having to deal with offfield issues and politics.”
Boden’s departure from Doncaster in February came as a shock, but the 41-year-old has no regrets about leaving the club that he served so well for so many years.
“I had a few personal things I wanted to get sorted out, after the death of my father, and I probably hadn’t spent as much time with my family as I should,” he explained.
“I probably needed a break away from it after 12 years of coaching in the Championship, which is very fatiguing, so the last five to six months gave me a chance to reset.”
After beginning his playing career at Leeds, Boden appeared 188 times for Doncaster before finishing his time on the field with a stint at the now-defunct Jersey Reds.
Boden then went on to become forwards coach for the Channel Islesbased club before returning to Yorkshire Carnegie in 2016 as head coach.
After helping Leeds to a play-off final in his first season at Headingley, Boden replaced Clive Griffiths as head coach of the Knights in time for the start of the Covid-affected 2020/21 season.
During his time at the Castle Park helm Doncaster recorded consecutive third, second and sixth-place finishes.
Championship coaches have long grown frustrated over the lack of opportunities afforded to them at a higher level because of the Premiership cartel and the huge disparity in funding between the top two divisions, and Boden was one of them.
But now that the Minimum Standards Criteria rules around ground capacity have been relaxed and plans for a twolegged promotion playoff approved by the RFU Council, clubs like Coventry have a more realistic chance of breaking through the glass ceiling.
Boden has been around the block long enough though to know that the bottom club in the Premiership would still be huge favourites to beat the Championship winner.
“It offers a glimmer of hope as such, a genuine shot at it (promotion). But the financial gulf is still the elephant in the room,” he said.
