In the beautiful surroundings of Farleigh House, an irresistible smell of barbecue fills the air. Finn Russell, fresh from training and chatting with a teammate, strolls across a courtyard to the sponsor party behind the walled garden.
The atmosphere is pleasant and the setting radiates opulence. But in the 18th-century neo-Gothic castle on the outskirts of Bath, the club’s head of rugby, Johann van Graan, talks of a journey that bears no resemblance to the grandeur of their training base, a journey his side has chosen to Premiership play. -offs for the first time in four seasons.
In a nondescript meeting room, the 44-year-old South African eloquently outlines the highlights since his arrival in July 2022 after five years in charge of Munster, and his attempt to reset the culture at a club that has been alone for too long but had been flattered. mislead.
“When I started at Bath I used a quote from Pep Guardiola when he said: ‘This beast called football will eat you alive if you’re not always yourself,’” he says. “So the first thing I decided when I joined Bath is that I’m going to be myself. And the first thing I said to all the people here is that we have the golden rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. And that’s how we started. From a cultural perspective, we wanted to make sure I create an environment where people can become themselves.”
With the generous support of owner Bruce Craig since 2010, the club has never been short of resources. But with just one Premier League final appearance since then, a defeat to Saracens in 2015, the sleeping giant of English rugby has hardly stirred.
When Van Graan arrived, the club, who won six league titles between 1989 and 1996, had just suffered the humiliation of finishing bottom of the Premiership for the first time in their illustrious history.
Root and branch overhaul
Having established the ground rules of engagement, Van Graan then had to lift the hood of the underperforming club. He describes his next phase as “two ears and one mouth”.
“I had to understand Bath, both on and off the pitch,” he adds. “When I started there were a lot of people who had been here for a long time so I took the first three months to really understand what was going on. How does the owner want the club to be run? What is the influence of the board, the CEO, the players, the supporters? How does it work at Farleigh House, what happens at the Rec? So I spent my time trying to understand before I was understood.”
The Pretoria-born coach had first made a name for himself as an analyst with the Bulls when they won Super Rugby titles in 2007, 2009 and 2010. From there he became a forward and attack coach with the Springboks, culminating in a third-place finish in the competition . 2015 World Cup before joining Munster as head coach in 2017.
“The South African system is very different from the Irish system, and both are very different from the English system,” he says. “Ireland have done a great job with so few players and David Nucifora [Ireland’s outgoing performance director] introduced, an incredible amount has happened for such a small country. There are many things different in the English system and after three months I reported to the board about the additional changes we needed to make.”
Drawing on the best practices of the two previous systems he had worked in, he called for a major overhaul. ‘All department heads changed under my supervision. We had to change the medical department, we had to change the way we train on and off the field. From an environmental perspective, we had to change the way we work.”
His recruitment policy is already well documented, with an emphasis on bringing in players with ball-carrying impact and leadership qualities, while Sarah Jenner, who was appointed as the club’s chief nutritionist, was tasked with transforming the club’s ‘body composition’. the players.
“We also needed more people who had been in winning environments. I found some incredibly good people at Bath, both on and off the pitch, but I needed more of winning environments to move the thing forward.”
“If you want short-term success, I’m not your guy.”
A visit to Japan in 2011 also left its mark on his coaching philosophy. “I have learned so much from the Japanese people. Their systems work so well. I showed the group a photo of a shinkansen [bullet] train – it is always on time and moves at high speed, and there is a starting point and an ending point.
“You don’t know what happens during the journey on a train, but we want to create an environment where people can get better and where people can enjoy themselves and be themselves, things like that happen on this train.
“I said to the group on the very first day that I want to be part of something with vision, something that becomes world class and then something that results in winning. A big word was coordination and asking what we wanted to achieve and not changing the goal posts every six months.
“That’s why, when Bath approached me, I said to Bruce and the board that if you want short-term success, I’m not your man. I want to see something in the future and then build towards it.”
For all his best intentions, it was the collapse of Worcester and the integration of former Warriors Ollie Lawrence, Valery Morozov, Fergus Lee-Warner, Ted Hill, Jamie Shillcock and Billy Searle into the club that brought the impact of the changes into sharp focus .
“That was a big moment for us,” says van Graan. “I talked to the players about a saying in Africa. It goes something like this: “I was crying because I had no shoes, until I saw a man with no feet.”
“That means that it was unthinkable that clubs would go under and then it suddenly happened. We talked about it and when the guys from Worcester joined us they talked about losing something they thought they couldn’t lose.
“They were so grateful that we included them and our players embraced them. It provided insight into what a rugby club really entails.”