Ford: Bodes must be mad to give me a go!

JOE FORD admits it was brave of Doncaster to take a punt of him after a coaching baptism of fire at Yorkshire Carnegie.

- JON NEWCOMBE

The former Leicester, Sale, Northampton and Leeds fly-half spent the first half of last season at Headingley as a rookie head coach.

To no-one’s surprise it turned out to be a thankless task, due to the club’s financial constraints, and they were rock bottom of the Championship when he left shortly after Phil Davies returned as boss at the turn of the year.

Ford told TRP: “Leeds was very difficult. Perhaps it was naivety on my part, but I didn’t think it would be as tough as it was with all the stuff off the field.

“Just getting 23 players on the pitch every week was hard, you were ringing up players on the Friday morning before the cut-off to register them pretty much every week because the squad was so small.

“Week on week you’d get people pulling out which I found really frustrating at the time. You’d name a team on the Tuesday and by Saturday you’d have five players who’d never trained with you before.