Rugby must recalibrate by remembering less is more

After a decade at Harlequins in various roles, former head coach and academy guru Mark Mapletoft offers NEALE HARVEY his views on the game.

- Mark Mapletoft

You’ve left Quins after ten years. Why now?

It’s time to re-evaluate from a personal perspective and anybody who’s been working in one organisation for that long would probably understand. Stepping away from the first team last year was great in terms of giving me a little bit of time to recalibrate because being in the firing line can become a bit mundane. A number of high-profile coaches move around but I decided to stay at the club through the transition of Conor O’Shea to John Kingston and then Paul Gustard, but now’s a good time to step away and do something different. I will be staying in rugby, 100 per cent; I’m not moving from where I live and won’t be commuting. Read into that what you will!

Despite many ups and downs, were you proud of your time at Quins?

Very proud. I had a pretty seamless transition from being involved with the RFU prior to joining Quins in 2010 because I’d already spent a lot of time in age-group rugby with guys like Danny Care, George Lowe, Jordan Turner-Hall, Rory Clegg and others, so there was a conveyor belt of high-class kids coming through – and they were just the backs! It was the perfect fit for me and winning the Premiership in 2012 was an obvious highlight. I still believe we were better in the two years after that, but at that time we were consistently losing our better players and we were clearly competing in the transfer market against teams who weren’t adhering to the salary cap regulations. It meant we were putting ourselves at a disadvantage because we ended up spending large parts of the season without England guys like Danny, Chris Robshaw, Joe Marler and Mike Brown, who were critical players to us, without necessarily having the depth to cover.