Steve Diamond

At 16, after his dad died, Steve Diamond stepped into his shoes as he was handed his job at the local printers. He was a cog in the wheel of a 2,000-strong workforce, pumping out millions of newspapers a day. Thanks to the union, it was paid well, too, £300 a week by the age of 18. A job for life. 

Don’t believe everything you read about Steve Diamond. Like the fact he was born in Chatham, Kent, which you would have read had you looked at his Wikipedia page a few weeks ago, and pops up elsewhere as a result. “Yeah, it’s weird that, but no, I was born two miles from here, but I never bothered to change it,” he says, “because it doesn’t matter where I was born.”

We’re in his office overlooking the training pitches at Carrington Road, a corner of Manchester known for training grounds of the professional sports club. Bury FC are up the road, Manchester City are almost next door, Manchester United the other side of them. 

On the pitch, the Sharks are looking fit. Faf de Klerk is back from South Africa duty and buzzing with purpose, James O’Connor is out there looking ready to play, and Chris Ashton is doing extra drills with his teenage team-mate Aaron Reed (something he does a lot of, we’re told). 

Back in the room though, their director of rugby seems initially apprehensive to our questions. When did you first play rugby? “At 13.” Was it in the family? “Nope, a school teacher who played rugby came to our comprehensive which didn’t, and said ‘let’s get a team together’.”

As we start to trace the timeline of his career though, he slowly warms up. He knew he might be half decent at rugby at 16. “In them days there wasn’t professionalism, so I had four or five trials with rugby league clubs when I was 18 and 19, but wasn’t good enough for that – it was a big step between rugby league and rugby union then.”

At 21, Steve Smith rang to ask if he wanted to join Sale, he said yes, and joined a squad containing, among others, Jim Mallinder. In doing so, he began what is now a 30-year association with the club. Not that he ever thought he’d make money from rugby though, at least not after his league trials didn’t go to plan. Instead, he was going to make his money in print. “I don’t think anybody knows what they’re going to do, do they?” he says, when asked about his career ambitions. “My old man died when I was 15, and I got his job on the newspapers as a printer, they held it for me until I’d left school at 16. In them days it was run by the unions and it was waiting for me, it was a fantastic job. I was the last hot metal apprentice in the country, although nobody nowadays will know what hot metal is.”

To keep you up to speed, hot metal was the method used by printers that involved using molten lead to create moulds of the words that would then be used to press the ink onto the paper. “In that day, it was the best paid trade job in the country,” continues Steve, “it had a very strong union base so it paid three times the average wage. They brought me out of the apprenticeship at 18 and I was earning £300 a week. I stayed there for six years.”

When Rupert Murdoch’s News International shifted the production of the Sunday Times to his new Wapping plant, stopping the use of hot metal (resulting in the infamous failed strike of 6,000 workers), it changed Steve’s career plan. “The newspaper industry changed overnight with the Wapping Dispute,” he says, “the labour force changed dramatically, and I went to work with a couple of printers before setting up my own printing business. I actually carried on doing that up until I joined Saracens in 2004, I couldn’t manage both at that point.”

What did you print? “Packaging, boxes, wrappers, crisp packets, all  sorts,” he says. 

Rugby did start to pay its way after all, he always knew he’d be able to make a living on the ‘outskirts of rugby, through knowing people and networking’, but by the time he was in his mid to late-20s, professionalism had arrived, and he went full-time with Sale. “It was that maverick time where coaches were generally school teachers that kept you at training for eight hours a day,” he says. “They thought that’s what it meant to be a professional and for four or five years it rumbled on like that, but then people realised they couldn’t have you training twice a day, then running five miles again at night.”

He left Sale briefly to be a player-coach at Macclesfield, which lasted six months, before getting the call to return as forwards coach. “Sale couldn’t win a lineout, and Brian [Kennedy] asked me to come back immediately,” he explains. 

Linking up with Mallinder, they both knew one thing they weren’t going to do. “We were coached badly at the end of our playing careers,” says Steve. “So when Jim and I got an opportunity, one of the first things we said, was that we were never going to do what they did to us. We coached in a manner that’s direct and forthright but, equally, expressive, and looking after the bodies. You don’t have to kill them at training because you want them to be fresh at weekends, so my mentality has always been that. To that extent, if I ever use terms that some people don’t like me using, like ‘old school’, to me it means generally the right way to do things. It doesn’t mean the kind of coaching we had 25 years ago.”

The pair led unfancied Sale to second in the Premiership. “We came from nowhere,” says Steve. “But then we had a disagreement on the way forward with Brian, we were lying seventh, and he thought it was right that he brought another coach in [Philippe Saint-Andre]. I didn’t agree, so I left. We’d done a good job at Sale, so it was easy to pick up another one.”

Another giant learning curve awaited him at his next job, Saracens. “I went into Saracens working for Nigel Wray but with another coach Rod Kafer,” explains Steve. “He’s a very good coach but I don’t think we had the players with the ability and desire to play with the detail that Rod wanted. 

“I think we were in a real transition too,” he continues. “I underestimated the job massively and I got quite a few things wrong as well as a couple of things right. I learned a lot about the man-management of those above you as well as those under you. We made a difference in year one and qualified for Europe which they hadn’t done for a few years, but then the same old problems resurfaced and I didn’t have the skillset in them days to deal with that and I was sent away.”

The same old problems, refers to Saracens’ then model of recruitment. “The difference between working with Brian at Sale was that we didn’t have infinite resources, so you learn to adapt and work with not much and you create your own players,” explains Steve. “Whereas with Sarries, in the years before I arrived, they had a different thought process, they didn’t have the fantastic academy producing loads of kids that they do now. It was ‘go pick a superstar and bring them in’, similar to Toulon now. Some years you can get that right, some you don’t, and in my years we didn’t. You’ve got to look at yourself and ask why I couldn’t convert that. As well with Toulon, the people above are always impatient because there’s a lot of money being spent. In any other walk of life, if you buy that car, that Ferrari, it’s going to beat that Ford, but that doesn’t work in sport. A lot of players were brought in who weren’t as ambitious as they could’ve or should’ve been.”

Some signings he exempts from criticism. “One of the first things I did was get Andy Farrell,” he explains. “I knew he wanted to change to rugby union, and I thought it was a good opportunity. He didn’t play much for me, to be honest, but his mentality around the place was massive, and that made a big impact.

“I think my tenure of two years and a couple of months was probably longer than most of those before me, although eventually Brendan Venter came in and got a good grip on it.”

When he came to leaving Watford [Saracens’ home ground at the time], he did have time to reflect. “Of course, at generally every club, whoever leaves, if it’s not on their terms, it was someone else’s fault,” he says, “but that was the big thing I learned driving up the M1 from Saracens on the 3rd February, 2006 – which was my birthday, which they probably didn’t know. It wasn’t about them, it wasn’t, ‘I can’t believe this was said’, or, ‘he’s not helped me out’ – fucking none of that. It was, ‘how the fuck have I got myself into this? I’m never doing that again, I’m never doing that again’. And then I sold my house, and thought, ‘fuck that, I hope I never go back to Watford’.”

The first person to pick up the phone after his departure from Saracens was the man that ultimately led to him leaving Sale in the first place, but there was no bitterness. “In hindsight, Brian was right to do it,” he says of bringing in Saint-Andre, “because they won the league. They might not have done that if me and Jim had stayed together, but when I got sacked at Saracens, he was the first guy to ring me and say, ‘do you want to come for a brew and go through the healing process of being fired?’.”

After the chat, he did the next thing most people do when finding themselves unemployed.

“I built a house,” he says. “It took me nine months of knocking one down and rebuilding it to get it all out of my brain, then I thought about starting a construction business. At weekends I was going to watch Sale play, and I figured I might as well get back on the track and see what happens.”

A year after leaving Saracens, his next job opportunity came from Jim, who was then running the show at Northampton Saints. “He offered me a job doing the recruitment for Northampton,” he explains. “They’d just gone down and Jim and Dorian [West] were installed and I helped them find players over the next three or four years. They had a good network themselves, but it was my job to put three player options in each position and they’d pick the one they wanted, then I’d tie up the deal behind the scenes for them.”

Put any good names to them? “Sione Tonga’uhia, Brian Mujati, Juandre Kruger, Lee Dickson, they were from my era. It was a great job.”

The job also dovetailed with another offer on the table: head coach of the Russian national side. “I knew the chief executive of the Russia Rugby Federation [Howard Thomas] and he called me out of the blue,” he explains. “I wasn’t in Northampton every week, a lot of what I was doing could be done remotely, and the Russia job was effectively six months a year, so it worked well to do both. It did help that my brother [Diamond is the youngest of six, with four brothers and a sister] was a senior director at an oil company in Moscow so there was a connection there already.”

The Russian Rugby Federation’s president Viatcheslav Kopiev set him a target of reaching the 2015 Rugby World Cup, and Steve would spend his time trying to cover the vast country’s rugby network. With players as far flung as Siberia, there was plenty of travelling. “I’d go two or three weeks to each region,” he says. “But because the weather was so bad in January, Kopiyev was good enough to afford us to take a squad of 40, plus staff, to South Africa every year for a training camp.

“For some of those boys from Siberia it was the biggest temperature swing ever – they’d be going from -25 degrees to 25 degrees.”

While he did experience some hostile games when facing Georgia on neutral territory – once in Ukraine, once in Turkey – aside from a few boos and burst rugby balls, he never felt that intimidated. “Although I was never far away from my passport in case the shit really hit the fan,” he admits. “You know you’re in a different zone from what you’re used to when the bus drivers carry a revolver.” 

In terms of standard, Steve pitches the club scene at around National One in English terms, but he still managed to get the side to the Rugby World Cup four years earlier, as they qualified for the 2011 tournament in New Zealand with matches to spare. In the process he learnt at least two things, one was about the people. “They’re actually similar folk to the British in humour and demeanour,” he reckons. “You see a Russian bloke on holiday who’s an arrogant prick in a bar or hotel, and that’s not your typical Russian, they’re good-humoured, hard-working people.”

He also learnt to be a more precise coach, particularly with his words. “I did learn a bit of Russian and you can get away to some degree with 30 words in training; tackle, get-up, get-down, stop, go. 

“And I think I learnt to become a better coach as a result, because if you can’t speak the language fluently, you have to cut all the shit out of the conversation. You have to be very precise and concise, and then let them get on with it. And that’s what all players like, players don’t like waffle.”

The opportunity to return home to Sale was impossible to resist, and he left before the Rugby World Cup. “I could, and still can, see the big opportunity at Sale, it’s work undone,” he says. “I think we can get the club to where they were then [as champions] and this time sustain it, because they didn’t do that before. Sale were like Blackburn Rovers when they won the Premiership, won it once, then went into obscurity. And I think we’re still in obscurity to be honest. 

“There’s no point being a one-trick pony,” he continues, “you want to do what Saracens and Exeter have done. You need the finances to do that, but we’re now in a position where we can.”

He might not say it, and indeed would probably deny if asked, but Steve is aware of how he can come across. It seems to leave him sometimes caught between wanting to correct the perception, while at the same time saying he doesn’t care. “The misconception is…” he begins, before restarting his train of thought. “Everybody has a persona [in the media], but nobody gets to know me unless they actually know me. What you see on TV or in interviews isn’t always what you get, and that’s how I like to be.”

What then follows is the story of how hard he found it telling his Russian employers that he wasn’t going to take the side to the world cup, and then helped them out by finding a replacement, Kingsley Jones, who would effectively go in the opposite direction. It’s one of a handful of instances he peppers through the chat, moments where he’s done things you perhaps wouldn’t have expected, or maybe you would, I guess it’s whether you know him or you don’t. 

His third fresh start at Sale came with a clean slate. And a clean wall. “I came in here,” he says, alluding to the office in which we sit. “This was the storeroom [he points to the other half of the office with a table and chairs in it] and this was the office and there were Post-it notes all over this wall, full of jobs not done. So I cleared them, brought a tin of paint in, stripped the wall and painted it that night, because it was filthy.

“The gym was out there,” he says, pointing to the office space outside of his with rows of desks lined with computers, “and you’d have 400kilos of weights out there bouncing on the floor and the building would be rocking, it was shite. So the first job was to move that gym, then effectively move on people who weren’t good enough for the Premiership.”

His first signing was Hugh Jenner, an analyst who’d only done an internship with Wasps before he was recommended to Steve who took him to Russia, and then back to Sale. He was starting with the details.

The remit for the job was to get ‘as high as I possibly could, spending a certain amount of money’, and his title was director of sport, although he’s not sure why. “I don’t know, but I was effectively head coach, director of rugby.”

Did he feel like he was coming home? “To a certain extent yes,” he admits, “because I live in the area, but I came back with this challenge of – it all sounds a bit Donald Trump-esque now – creating this north western super club. I made this video called ‘Year Zero, We’re Starting Again’. I’ve got a mate who works in an editing company and he helped me make it. That carried me through the first few years, working on 60% of the budget of the other 11 clubs, if that, and finishing sixth every other year.”

What was on the video? “The blueprint,” he says, “for the players and the sponsors. It doesn’t need to come out ever again, but the point of the video was, ‘do we want to be bumbling around the bottom of the league – ironically, that’s where we are now – or do we want to challenge these teams?’ 

“I also took the emphasis away from us not being able to spend a lot of money,” he says. This was still before the Simon Orange era [the current owner], so to take the ‘emphasis away’ from a comparative lack of funding, he had to find other ways to motivate. “The first time I had the new players and staff come and look at this place it was a shithole, the car park was all potholed, the gym was still up here, the offices hadn’t been built.

“Then when the pre-season started, they all came back, we’d built the offices and the gym, done the car park – we’d spent half a million quid – they were all like ‘fuck me, it’s unbelievable’, but we hadn’t increased the spend on the playing budget.”

One thing he would change about his fresh start was the timing. “If I’d come back earlier, in December, I think Charlie [Hodgson] would’ve stayed,” he says. “Although if I’m honest it was probably the best move for the lad, his career went the right way at Saracens, our loss was their gain.”

Not that he had to wait long for a quality fly-half to arrive. “It was the right move for Danny [Cipriani] to come to Sale,” he says. “He had somebody like me who likes the way he is, most of the time, but also doesn’t put up with any shit. He was a brilliant player that won us many games. There was one game and he missed an important kick and someone gave him stick and I remember saying, ‘for every one like that, he wins us five, don’t forget that’.

“He was here four years and we finished in Europe twice, people don’t comprehend that,” says Steve, altering direction slightly. “We’d finish in Europe, fifth or six, but then the following year you’d get fucking Toulon and Montpellier and I’d never had more than a 34-man squad so the squad couldn’t hack it. Consequently you’d finish outside of the top six that year, then you’d regroup in the summer, and get back in the top six.

“Since Simon and Ged [Mason, the other owner] came on board we’ve not got in Europe for the last two years. Although we should’ve done it last year, I was gutted, there were three moments of madness in three matches that cost us Europe. But there we are.”

The new owners arrived in the summer of 2016, taking over from Brian Kennedy – who’d been at the helm for 16 years. It wasn’t too much of a shift for Steve though. “Simon and I go back a long way,” he says. “When we were playing we used to have an end of season tour when the majority of the team would bugger off to Spain for five days, I’d always invite four of five of my non-rugby mates along to bring some fresh blood to the group and Simon was one of them.

“Ged Mason lives next door but one to me, so I’d built up a friendship with him too, and we got together and the lads bought it.”

The influx of cash from Orange and Mason has helped them secure some big names, but injuries, suspensions and the call-up of Faf de Klerk to the Springboks, means we’ve not yet seen the full Sale Sharks side in action. A poor start – although we meet the week after a win over Perpignan – hasn’t dented the bigger goals. “Simon’s target is to be top six side initially, then a top four side, and when you’re a top four side you’ve got a chance of winning it,” he says. “We’ve obviously not achieved that yet.”

Steve always seems alert to unasked questions. When he’s talking of the owner expectation, he then gives an anecdote of the German football coach being under pressure after two games on the bounce, potentially out on his ear after four or five more. “I’m fortunate that I’m not in that position and that I know enough about how to do this,” he says. “I have the ultimate trust and respect of the owners that this is where we’re going with it. There’ll be some shallow pools along the way that we may fall in, but ultimately this is what we are going to do.”

And you hope they do, rugby needs a successful club in the north west.  “There’s only a few clubs older in the world than Sale and it’s important that we keep a senior team in the north west,” he says. “Because if we go, let’s be honest, there’s only one, Newcastle. 

“We have to run it like a business though and not let it haemorrhage cash. Because if you look at nearly all of the other clubs, they’re all losing shitloads of money. We lose a bit of money, but how these guys do it I don’t know. It’s crazy. How do you measure success? Is it owing £60m and winning the competition or owing a couple of million and being competitive? 

“My view is changing on that actually,” he continues, “I now think success is driven by what you win, and the rest will hopefully look after itself – with building crowds, owning stadiums…” 

They are though, doing their bit to support local rugby. “We offer free buses to every one of the clubs in Lancashire and Cheshire to come and watch our games; we do coaching days; we offer free tickets; and if Tom Curry plays for England, we give Crewe & Nantwich £12,000 in kit because he’s come through the pathway process. Preston Grasshoppers – Aaron Reed and Matt Sturgess came from there and we pay the club money, no other club in the country does that.”

There are niggles. If you’ve Googled Steve Diamond of late, one article pops up more regularly than most. It’s why the phrase ‘old school’ came up earlier, and it comes up again when we talk of the press. “I read most of the press if I’m honest, I don’t do social media, I’m not on Twitter or Facebook, but I think most of the stuff that’s wrote is fair,” he says. “There was an article a month or so ago that I thought was one-eyed and biased, and that person has formed his own opinion, well done. I could’ve responded, but I didn’t.”

It hit a nerve, however, as it no doubt intended to. He does respond to some commentary, whether it be in this article or others. “I was sent some information earlier,” he says, taking a screwed-up piece of paper from the bin, “the average age of the team at Perpignan was 24, two players were 18, three were 19? Who would do that? I give young players opportunities.”

He does tackle some aspects of criticism head on, in fact he tackles more than a few, but perhaps the main issue of discussion is player welfare. Firstly, he says, he has no say on HIA. “If there’s HIA, he’s off, I have no say, the doctors have the say,” he says, “However, if it was his shoulder then I’ve got a right to say keep him on until half time.” 

Injuries are top of every agenda though, but, he says, he knows his boundaries. “Any doctor who’s ever worked with me will say anything neural has nothing to do with me,” he says, “but if someone has got a hamstring or sore elbow then I can push him. That’s my job. I can get him to play, squeeze that tube of toothpaste, to see if I can get something out of it. 

“This has nothing to do with the skeleton where he can be seriously injured, it’s the job you have with your medical staff. The questions are: ‘How can you get him out? Can we get him out? Is it worth the risk? No? Right keep him out for another two weeks.’ That’s everybody’s job at every club but people don’t like talking about it.”

He pulls no punches. In quick succession, he talks about; the game being miles better than it once was; that we play “a slow drab game, even though people don’t say it”. He thinks coaching is “over-rated by ten times”; and that “people get paid far too much money in certain positions”. He knows rugby is all about the players but adds that they “need guidance and pushing in the right direction”. 

And that could even mean playing with a niggle. “Tell me when, in the history of rugby, has anyone played after week one when everything’s right, it just doesn’t happen. 

“I care about player welfare, we have had the lowest injuries in the Premiership every year, year on year, since 2011. It’s 30% less than the next team.

“And the reason for that is that we don’t do any contact out there, it’s 60 minutes and no contact, we save that for the weekend.”

None? “We do very little, a few scrums, but it won’t be bone on bone.” 

He does care about respect, he says. “You’ll make your own opinion after you’ve met me today, because we’ve never met before,” he says, 

“But I’ve a gang of lads in there who give a shit,” he continues. “Today I’ve sent one of the senior players home for inappropriate behaviour, and he’ll be brought back in on Monday and we’ll start again. At least 15 of those people out there would say, ‘fucking brilliant, best thing you did’ [in sending him home]. I’ve got respect for them, they’ve got respect for me. Just because we’ve lost a few games that doesn’t alter.”

There’s exasperation, for sure, at some of the modern ways, and he acknowledges that his own upbringing made him grow up faster than most. “People coming up from the academy don’t work like I did when I was 16,” he says. “The nearest to my age when I was working was 59, and I was this child going into a plant in the middle of Manchester with 2,000 people, running out the Daily Mirror and Daily Telegraph, and they’re saying, ‘right son, we know your dad’s dead, now get over there and work’. I grew up dead quick and I probably do expect too much of people.

“For example the other day Tom [Curry] wrote something and I quoted him this morning, he said ‘I train like I play, because if I don’t train like I play, then I won’t play right at the weekend’ – but I don’t think many people are brought up like that now.”

Moving away from the frustrations, what does he love most about rugby? “I actually like the camaraderie,” he says. “When people stick together, when times are hard – that’s when I thrive. I make decisions instinctively, I do get some wrong, but I’d rather make a decision than be fluffy and not. 

“I’ve got a strong leadership team here too and, contrary to popular belief, they have their say. The player leadership too, Jono Ross isn’t afraid of telling me if they want to do things differently.”

Recently, whether he says it directly or not, he’s clearly felt the pressure. “Dorian arriving is a weight off my shoulders,” he admits. “I can’t do all the barking all the time, but what Dorian does really well is that he’s technically fucking brilliant in my eyes, I remember that from when I worked with him at Northampton.

“When I came out of a Leicester game and we’d got beat, I was like ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, what are we going to do?’ And I said to my wife, ‘I’ve just had a brainwave, Dorian West is out of work, he could just be the man’. I ring him, and he says, ‘fucking hell Dimes, I’ve been waiting six months for a phone call like this’. I said, ‘get your arse up here tomorrow, let’s not talk about money, let’s get you in the job’. He’s made a massive impact. People have said with me and Dorian, it’s a case of, ‘bad cop, bad cop, but let them think like that. 

“I’ve got the best backs coach in the country, Paul Deacon, we’ve got a few issues with players getting fit, and in our recruitment drive we’re after a world-class loose head, world-class tight head, world-class hooker and two world-class locks and we’re on them now. When we’ve got those five, then we’ve got a team on our hands.”

And then? “In the next ten years, hopefully they’re be a replica of a Premiership trophy in reception and we’ll have a player pathway going from 850 to 1,500.”

If you take away columns and headlines, and look at the results, does he feel he gets any credit for what he’s done at Sale? “I get credit,” he says. “I get paid, that’s my credit, I don’t need people to slap me on the back, I know what we do. I know what we create, I know where we’re going with it. Ultimately if your life is about getting a pat on the back you’re not going to go very far.” 

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Philip Haynes

This extract was taken from issue 4 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.