The Slam man ready for the Warriors' way

The removal last Monday of John Brain as Worcester's director of rugby, two days after his team finished the Premiership in second- to-last place, emphasised that the game's ethos of kinship and sticking up for your mates has been kicked into touch in the open era. "Every board of every club wants success," said Mike Ruddock, Brain's replacement, whose qualifications for the job pre-date the season he has just spent coaching in the equivalent of Wales's fifth division.

"I met the Worcester players and told them I would be rusty," admitted Ruddock, fresh from celebrating the Asda Division Three South West title with Mumbles. His engagements two nights a week with the junior club near his Swansea home will conclude on Wednesday when a local cup final pits Mumbles against Tumble, 15 months on from the almighty rumble over Ruddock's departure as Wales coach. He will then move his wife and three children to Worcester, and return to full-time, high-profile rugby.

Ruddock - formerly of Swansea, Leinster, Ireland (as an assistant) and Newport Gwent Dragons among others - spent his youth in the Gwent valleys skipping over slag-heaps but he is reluctant to rake over the coals of Valentine's Day 2006 when he and the Welsh Rugby Union fell out of love. An official statement cited "family reasons"; the media cited months of wrangling over Ruddock's contract and the influence of "player power".

Ruddock left with an OBE after the 2005 Grand Slam and a publisher's offer of "good money" to write his memoirs, which he declined. "Rudyard Kipling reckoned if you look back you're in danger of falling down the stairs," said Ruddock. "It's important you learn from the good and the bad experiences."

So quite how or why a Grand Slam should turn bad remains subject to conjecture. "The confusion applies to my perspective of certain things," is almost all the 47-year-old Ruddock will add, though he admits: "Wales is a great place to live, but international coaching can become all-consuming. The Premiership will be the same intensity but different in that you can switch off sometimes and not everyone walking down the street will want to talk rugby."

It is beyond dispute that Wales' staff and players were split between the Australian skills coach, Scott Johnson, and Ruddock and his ally, defence coach Clive Griffiths. And the instability, it appears, has endured with the current coach, Gareth Jenkins, admitting it took months for the players to "drop the barriers" to his regime after Johnson's caretaker tenure. The squad for the forthcoming tour of Australia and the party will be led by Gareth Thomas - he of the heated television appearance and burst blood vessel in the wake of Ruddock's going. There are rumours of fresh agitation over what the players regard as inadequate appearance money.

Ruddock won [pound]50 betting on Wales to beat England with the English boss of the Newport recruitment company he has been working for. He is believed to want Griffiths, who has just led Doncaster to a best-ever third place in National League One, to join him and the backs coach Billy McGinty at Worcester. However, Doncaster are less than pleased, with Griffiths halfway through a two-year contract. Brain had 14 months left on his Worcester deal when he was dismissed. The Warriors' chairman, Cecil Duckworth, has some sorting- out to do before he continues with "Project Sixways", which envisages a 50 per cent increase in stadium capacity to more than 15,000 and a site expanded to 90 acres with 24 professional and amateur teams.

"I would like to add to the Worcester squad," said Ruddock, whose sons Ciaran and Rhys, 18 and 16, have played for the Ospreys' youth teams and are off soon to university and Mill-field School respectively. They and sister Katie, 11, and mum Bernadette will move rather than have dad commute along the M4 and M5.

I remind Ruddock of the night in autumn 2005 when he was guest of honour at his old school. He stood in the assembly hall of Nantyglo Comprehensive and urged an enraptured young audience to "follow their dreams". Ruddock merely laughs off the irony - this, remember, is a man who came to coaching only after fracturing his skull falling from a ladder as an electricity lineman - and prefers to look to the future. "It's all about the Warriors now," he said.

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