Dubai: Kindness will be at the centre of Ben Ryan’s next coaching role after admitting he is embarrassed with the man he used to be.
The 45-year-old Englishman led Fiji Sevens to Olympic gold in Rio this summer after having secured back-to-back World Series wins with the Pacific Islanders.
He now has his pick of almost any job in world rugby, but the former England coach, who has won four of the last six Dubai Sevens titles, says that unless it is kind he’s not interested. “Too many teams around the world have bullies at the top, too much negative banter, and they create a culture that doesn’t allow players to flourish and be their best. When I eventually go back into a team I expect to make sure the culture is a winning one but also a kind one,” he told Gulf News on the sidelines of a recent HSBC schools coaching clinic in Dubai.
“When England picked me up 10 years ago it was because I was being different, creative and I wasn’t just a normal coach. Then I got into the corporate machine of England and got chipped away, it’s subtle but I actually became not the coach I wanted to be.
“I look back at England and am pretty embarrassed with myself. I don’t think I showed enough kindness and didn’t have measures to see whether my behaviour was as it should have been.
“I went to Fiji and that gave me a breath of fresh air and everything went back to how I was initially as a young coach.
“Above everything kindness was at the top of that, along with listening to people, not having a big ego, and understanding that the end job of a coach is to make myself redundant, to go into a big game and sit in the stands because everybody knows exactly what to do. And I could have done that in the Olympic final.”
Little budget
Ryan’s journey with Fiji, overcoming devastating hurricanes, limited resources, going unpaid, and losing players to lucrative foreign offers with passports to play abroad, has caught Hollywood’s attention. “We showed we could do it on very little budget keeping things very simple, while playing with a smile upon our faces. Kindness and winning were two key things we wanted to get across to people.
“That you can have simple foundations and player empowerment but you can also do things with mindfulness and kindness and be successful but ruthless and I think in professional sport those two things sometimes get lost.
“They become too much of a bully at the top and think money will solve everything and technology will push off lesser nations and that they will outfund them all and I think Fiji showed you don’t have to do that.
“The humility they played with throughout the tournament is the reason why they were seen as the highlight of the Games, and why they are up for so many awards. I think we were perfect gold medallists for the inaugural Sevens at the Olympics because we proved you can do a lot with a little.”
New audience
Ryan is now biding his time with public speaking engagements in America and has said he won’t return to coaching until at least the beginning of next season. In the meantime the enormity of Rio is just starting to sink in.
“With Sevens being played at the Olympics for the first time it’s reached a whole new audience. Even if I had won the 15s Rugby World Cup, I wouldn’t have been able to walk into the New York Knicks changing room as I did recently and have Carmelo Anthony say: ‘Oh, it’s Mr Fiji’. He wouldn’t have even watched the Rugby World Cup.”
The reaction in Fiji, who had never previously won an Olympic medal in any event, was just as surreal. “They offered me a blank cheque, said I could have whatever I wanted, gave me land and citizenship, I’m now the only non-Fijian who is a chief and there will be a new seven dollar bill with my face on it.
“They did their very best to make me stay and even when I was boarding the plane to leave the CEO was still saying: ‘does this mean I have to advertise your position?’ I replied: ‘Yes, I told you four months ago I was always going to do this.’
“It’s sad, I miss Fiji in many respects and it was tough to leave but I came with just one aim of being the first Fiji coach not to be sacked and I had achieved that.
“There’s no doubt I’ll be back to build on the land and I have friends there, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I had another stint with Fiji in the future, but it was definitely the right thing for me to move away and have a think about everything.”
