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.
This story is from the May 31, 2020 edition of The Rugby Paper.
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This story is from the May 31, 2020 edition of The Rugby Paper.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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