Time to clear the deadwood from The Shed

At 5.29pm today, Gloucester Rugby released a statement on the clubs official website stating that Head Coach Dean Ryan had left his position "by mutual consent". It brought to a climax the 7-year rugby mirage that has been the former England No.8's tenure at Kingsholm. The tired cliché talks of 'rollercoaster' seasons, but for cherry and white's fans' it's been more like sitting on a lilo in the Southern Ocean. Highlights have arisen as quickly as they been brought crashing back down again, an opening in the waves for the team to sail to glory has appeared, only for the storm to whip up once more and blow them 5o miles back again. However hard a vast array of expensively assembled crew have paddled the side has stood still. The hapless captain had to leave the ship before the whole thing went down.

No trophies in his entire tenure as Director of Rugby would read as a disappointing statistic in itself, but is was the manner of the failures. Twice Gloucester topped the final Premiership standings, failing to convert regular season dominance into overall titles on both occasions. At European club rugby’s top table, Gloucester must register as one of the continents biggest underachievers with their negligable impact on the competitions business stages. Their last visit to a final, this year's EDF Energy Cup against Cardiff Blues at Twickenham also culminated in spectacular failure. And it is this that is perhaps the most damming indictment of the Ryan era. It is not only the failure to finally convert a talented squad and strong overall season form in to big game success; it is the fact that the failures have been quite so cataclysmic! It is all very well after a big game mauling to churn out how you have learnt a hard and valuable lesson and that you'll go away and come back stronger at the next opportunity. However, when all the evidence consistently suggests that you have done nothing of the sort, questions need to be asked of the man at the top. Far from looking like a man who had garnered, painfully acquired tactical nouse for the big occasion, Ryan looked increasingly clueless and predictably reactive.

Demolition by the Tiger's twin south sea island wrecking balls, Rambeni and Tuilagi, in 06/07 Grand Final convinced Ryan, to a large extent, to move away from the expansive style of play that had served Gloucester so well in the league and try win the war up front with sides in the biggest games. Whilst Gloucester obviously needed to adapt their exhilarating, yet lightweight, style of play there was very much a case of the old adage "throwing the baby out with the bath water". This is what I mean by Ryan being reactive; he swung the Gloucester tactics to the polar opposite following the Leicester defeat, which meant when they faced Munster in the following seasons Heineken Quarter-Final at Kingsholm the side had clearly been wound up in to frenzy about how physical they needed to be. Ryan pushed the side so far that they spent all day trying to maul Munster down the field, pummel them round the fringes, or simply run over them. It was, as the result demonstrated, a complete disaster. Gloucester went away from everything that was good about their own game in an attempt to counteract the Munster power, and subsequently played right into the men from Thomond Park's hands. Ryan had simply reacted to being beaten by force at Twickenham by trying to recreate that same style in his own side, when the talents of his squad clearly didn't lend themselves to such tactics.

The next big game arrived in the Play-Off Semi-Finals the following month. Following defeat to Munster Ryan had said he felt the side were "moving in the right direction". For the first hour at home to Leicester it looked like maybe he was right, and that the painful lessons were going to pay dividends. However, Ryan was again to come up tactically short. Ryan clearly didn't have a strategy for how to close out big games. It seemed as though the game plan was either to blow the opposition so far out the game with Plan A that they wouldn't need a closing out tactic, or if the game was close going in to the final quarter, simply allow the players in the decision making positions to make it up as they went along. The latter would have perhaps been acceptable had Ryan's inconsistent selection, dreadful man management and scatter gun recruitment policy not dictated that most of the important combinations on the field had never been together consistently enough to instinctively know how to kill off big games. The Munster's and Leicester's of this world have tried and tested combinations that have been in these situations time and again, win or lose, they know they can withstand the pressure and get the side past the winning post. Their teammates subsequently believe that these combinations will hold firm and that the team ARE going to get the job done. At Gloucester, there has been none of this confidence and belief. All they know is failure and then change the combination again, the panic sets in, control is lost, and Andy Goode drops a last minute goal to condemn you to failure once more.

I am not arguing that the players are totally blameless in all this. Seasoned professionals, internationals even, have woefully unperformed when they were most needed; yet again, the man at the top seems to have played his part in this. The side looked totally devoid of ideas, belief, and confidence against Cardiff Blues as they were annihilated in the EDF Energy Cup Final this year. The Coach had once again not armed his players with the appropriate strategy and belief, or more worryingly, the players on this occasion after so many previous disappointments simply didn't trust him anymore. Ryan's man management has got to come into question at this point along side, what we will generously term a recruitment policy. It's a clear return to Ryan's reactive style of management we touched on earlier. If something went wrong all the good went out with the bad in wholesale changes. I'm all for players standing up and earning their place in the starting line up but how is Ryan Lamb consistently meant to come back and turn in top performances in big games when he's just been ditched the previous week and told he's not good enough. Chris Patterson has barely missed a kick before or since his Heineken Cup nightmare so the question has got to be asked why then? One would suggest that if the coach clearly hasn't fancied you for the majority of the season, you’re on the brink of sealing a deal back to Edinburgh as a result, then your confidence and motivation may, justifiably, not be quite all it should for a Heineken Cup Quarter Final. Ryan demanded performances at key times from too many players he hadn't backed previously.

On the key elements of sporting management Ryan ultimately came up short. His tactics were reactive and rigidly one dimensional. With more funds at his disposal that most of his counterparts around the league his recruitment policy seemed to lack clear direction, taking a gamble on a rugby league convert may be a calculated gamble, but two at the same time, for big salaries, seems excessively rash. Ollie Berkley and Chris Patterson went as quickly as they arrived and at one stage this season their were four fly halves on the books in the first team squad, more options than they often had in the back three. His lack of man management skills and inconsistent team selection, when coupled with this recruitment strategy, escalated a lack of confidence and lack of familiarity in the squad. In difficult situations in tight games the best sides fall back on that shared experience of how to get through the situation something Ryan’s squad was never afforded through constant chopping and changing, particularly in the back row, where not only did the personnel change, but the positions they were playing in. Belief that Ryan could finally end the wait for trophies had dissipated, from supporters, players and ultimately ownership. As Tom Walkinshaw told a local radio interview “One week we could beat almost anyone, the next week we couldn't beat a carpet.” Former Scotland scrum half Bryan Redpath steps up to hot seat now. He will have plenty of weapons, but needs to change the culture of the club before success can finally come to Kingsholm.