Mike Ford

At Oldham’s Boundary Park, a ground where fame once flickered at the dawning of football’s Premiership era, one of league-union’s great crossover coaches, Mike Ford, is attempting his finest feat: reviving the fortunes of his home-town club.

Mike Ford is sat in a hospitality box at Oldham Athletic Football Club’s Boundary Park ground, overlooking the pitch. He’s in his element, waxing lyrical about his hopes and dreams for Oldham RLFC, the ‘Roughyeds’ who currently languish in rugby league’s third tier. This is a man who has been involved in some of rugby’s biggest games – in both codes – having played in arguably the greatest-ever Challenge Cup final in 1985 [when Wigan defeated Hull 28-24] and coached England in two Rugby World Cups in the fifteen-a-side game.

But, home is where the heart is. Mike, who made his name in league as a player and in union as a coach, was born and raised in Oldham, supported Oldham Rugby League FC as a child, and the 57-year-old was part of a consortium of local lads who took ownership of the Roughyeds earlier this year. From next season, they will play all their home games back at Boundary Park, encouraging hopes of a bright future for a club who have been in the doldrums for too long. 

As managing director and interim head coach, Mike wants to revive this proud old club in a rugby league heartland. “Where does Oldham sit in British rugby league’s hierarchy?” he asks. “When you delve into it, Oldham is connected to the history of the game from day one.

“The founding secretary of the Northern Union was called Joseph Platt, the treasurer at Oldham RLFC. He played a key role in organising the meeting at Huddersfield’s George Hotel, on 29 August, 1895, at which the Northern Rugby Football Union was born.

“Oldham were actually founded in 1876 and were one of the founding members of rugby league, so in three years’ time it will be our 150th anniversary,” says Mike, concluding his brief history lesson. “And it’s our ambition to make the town proud of the team again – we recently played our first game back here at Boundary Park since 2009.

“We’ll be here full-time from next season and there are millions of rugby players to have come from Oldham … Paul Sculthorpe, Barrie McDermott, Iestyn Harris and Kevin Sinfield to name but a few.”

Not that he’s kicking the project off with big names. “The first thing I did after getting involved here was to try and get the pathway going again,” he explains, “so we invited under-11s, 12s, 13s and 14s to our training facility in Chadderton and 230 kids attended. But when I asked them all ‘what colours do Oldham rugby play in?’ they couldn’t answer. We’ve missed out for many years, but it was a fantastic start because the kids are the future of this club.”

Mike was born at home in 1965 in Springhead, the son of a plumber, and has three sisters in a sporting family. It was his schooling, and his father’s love for Oldham RLFC, which set him up for a professional career in rugby. “I went to Lyndhurst Primary School in Oldham and had a really fanatical rugby league guy, Mr Charlie Saul, as my teacher,” he recalls. “We were lucky that he wanted us to play league and I distinctly remember going for trials.

“Mr Saul gave me one more chance to run hard at a bloke who was bigger than me, saying, ‘if you don’t run hard, you’re not going to make it’. I must have run hard because I was in the team and ended up playing at Wembley in 1977, representing Oldham.

“We were the first Oldham team to do that,” he continues, “Kevin Sinfield’s school did so a few years later – and playing for my school got me to represent Oldham’s town team. I then went to Saddleworth School where Phil Larder was my PE teacher so three Oldham lads have been England defence coaches … Phil, myself and now Sinny. If you talk about a rugby town, Oldham’s unbelievable really.”

Of course, Mike went on to enjoy a distinguished playing career as a scrum-half for Wigan, Leigh, Oldham, Castleford, South Queensland Crushers, Warrington, Wakefield and Bramley. In 1985, he played alongside Australian Brett Kenny as Wigan beat a Hull FC featuring Kangaroos star Peter Sterling 28-24 in the Challenge Cup final in front of nearly 100,000 fans at Wembley, and also played for Great Britain. But, much like his three sons Joe, George and Jacob, coaching always interested him. “In 1997, I was still playing for Castleford and I knew then I wanted to coach,” he says. “Dukinfield, a local rugby union club got in touch with me and asked if I would be their skills coach during the summer. “I thought, ‘great, I’m going to coach men’ having only coached kids.

“After that summer the head coach couldn’t come back due to work commitments, so they asked me to do it. That was good because they played on a Saturday and rugby league was played on a Sunday. So, I used to go to Cas during the day and on a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I’d be at Dukinfield – I was there for five years. During that time, I had left Cas and started coaching Bramley and Oldham.

“They were part-time, so I was coaching Oldham, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Dukinfield on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I was out every night – you do stuff like that when your kids are young and you have a mortgage to pay.”

During his time as player-coach at Oldham, Mike’s relationship with Larder opened the door to a new world. “I was very close to Phil, who was always popping over to Australia,” says Mike. “A guy called Jack Gibson was his go-to man at Parramatta and Phil rewrote the coaching manual and courses and became England rugby union defence coach.

“Then, when I was player-coach here at Oldham in 2000, Phil invited me down to an England camp at Twickenham, just to try and learn and develop. That’s when Phil said, ‘would you like to coach rugby union as well?’”

Larder told him Ireland were looking for a defence coach. “Warren Gatland was coaching Ireland, but Eddie O’Sullivan was taking charge and they came to me and I spoke to them at an interview in Leeds,” says Mike. “I was sitting in the reception of this hotel and out walked Ellery Hanley. We played together at Wigan and it was a little bit awkward because we were going for the same job. Anyway, Ireland offered it to me as a 100-day contract – a Six Nations in 2002 and then a three-week tour to New Zealand.”

The deal meant he was able to still work with Oldham, as well as keeping one foot in the international scene. “I went back to Oldham rugby and the chairman Chris Hamilton said ‘yes, it’ll be brilliant for the club and for our assistant coaches’. We came up with a plan so I could do both and they all agreed to it. Happy days. Then, at the eleventh hour, Oldham said I couldn’t do it. They couldn’t see the vision that I was going to go away, experience something different and bring it back to our organisation. That forced my hand a little bit, so I took the Ireland job. I was very lucky because Ireland didn’t have a defence coach so I couldn’t be judged.

“I was curious and wanted to learn but had no job to go back to, having left a three-and-a-half-year deal at Oldham for 100 days with Ireland. I asked Eddie O’Sullivan ‘are you going to keep me on?’ and in that time Brian Noble came in and wanted me as his assistant at Bradford Bulls.”

Mike also had offers from Hull FC, but the pull of Ireland was too strong. “Eddie said ‘we want you to go to the World Cup’ in 2003, which was eighteen months away. I thought, ‘brilliant, I’ll get to experience a World Cup, another Six Nations’. Then you realise how big the sport is and why they train like they do.

“And each game – because I only coached internationally at this point – was like going to Wembley for a Challenge Cup final. They were that big and the job opportunities you have as a coach, to have longevity in the sport, were clear to see.

“In Super League at the time, with twelve teams, five or six jobs went to Australian coaches and the international game was nowhere near rugby union. You were fighting for five or six jobs but Ireland themselves had five coaches. That’s the reason I’ve been able to have longevity, but obviously you’ve got to be successful as well.”

Mike loved his time with Ireland but a desire to lead his own team saw a move to Saracens as head coach. “I was probably too eager to become a head coach – I wanted to be the best and get to the top,” he says with a tinge of regret. “You don’t know it at the time, but you’re not ready and that’s the advice I would give to young coaches now. Anyway, I went to Saracens as head coach and we did unbelievably well.

“From finishing tenth the previous season, we went on to finish fifth and qualify for Europe in 2004-05, which raised everyone’s expectations. The year after, we didn’t qualify for Europe and they wanted to put me from head coach to defence coach. They got Eddie Jones in as a consultant and I didn’t think it was good for me to go from head to defence coach in the same organisation. But then England came in for me as a defence coach and I spent six years with them. That was brilliant.”

Under Brian Ashton, England reached the 2007 World Cup final in France, but four years later were knocked out by France in the quarters.

Mike has endless stories of his time with England. “Andy Robinson had been sacked as head coach, but they kept the assistant coaches on and Brian Ashton was one of them,” he says. “He took over from Andy and it was difficult because we went to South Africa before the World Cup with a second/third-string team. In the final of the Heineken Cup was Leicester and Wasps, who formed the bulk of our squad, so we decided not to take them to South Africa. So, we go to South Africa and get beat by fifty points in both games. It was tough going into the World Cup and in our group were Tonga, Samoa, USA and South Africa!”

England struggled to win against USA in the opening game, and then against South Africa they lost 36-0. “The worst experience I’ve ever had with the media was the morning after that,” says Mike. “Brian Ashton wasn’t feeling well and didn’t do the press conference. All the top sports writers had come over for it and it was daunting because they were asking questions like, ‘what are you going to say to us and your fans about winning the World Cup?’

“You have to be positive and say things like ‘it’s only a pool game’ but it was so, so difficult and I wasn’t quite ready for it. But again, you learn. I was a young coach and the next game we played Samoa and we’re getting sacked if we lose. That probably would have been right as well.”

And, it didn’t start well. “We’re losing the game with thirty minutes to go but then we pulled away and won, so we ended up being in the quarter-final against Australia, having had some tough games against South Africa, Tonga and Samoa.”

Australia were firm favourites having scored an average of forty points per game. “Yet they weren’t ready in terms of intensity and physicality,” says Mike. “We knew they wouldn’t be well prepared because everything they had done had been too easy. We got them that day and we beat them 12-10. Andrew Sheridan destroyed their scrum at loosehead, Jonny (Wilkinson) kicked the goals and our defence was good.

“Then we played France in the semi-final in the Stade de France. We won the toss and put them in the away changing rooms. We had won the game by then because you know what the French are like!” Being the home nation took its toll. “They tightened up because of the pressure, so they didn’t play at all. We scored one try to nil and now we’re back playing South Africa in the final.

“It was a hell of a lot closer game this time – Mark Cueto scored a try [which was not given by the TMO] and the referee never sinbinned Victor Matfield who conceded the penalty. With the commotion of the TMO, the referee forgot the guy who actually conceded the original penalty. We kicked the goal, but he should have been sinbinned as well.”

Mike sees parallels between 2007 and 2023. “England are not entirely dissimilar now going into this World Cup. No one is giving them a chance but if you look at the squad Steve Borthwick’s picked, there are sixteen or seventeen players who played in the final four years ago. And that’s massive experience. It will always come down to one game and one or two moments within that.”

While Ashton left England after the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Mike stayed on with the new regime, under Martin Johnson. At the 2011 showpiece, they’d fail to replicate the final success, losing to France in the quarter-finals. “France scored two tries in the first fifteen minutes of the quarter-final. We came back, but it was too late and that was a disaster because we were the favourites.

“Martin kept it simple,” he says. “He’s one of those guys who commands instant respect and he’s just down to earth. His favourite saying is ‘it is what it is’.”

Mike’s experience extends to the British & Irish Lions too, having been part of Sir Clive Woodward’s disastrous 2005 tour of New Zealand. “We lost all the Tests but Clive, in his wisdom, split the coaching team up. We were called the midweek team and then Clive, Andy Robinson, Eddie O’Sullivan and Phil Larder were the Test team. In theory you could see what he was trying to achieve but in practice it didn’t quite work because the players felt separated.

“But we didn’t lose,” says Mike. “Out of the twelve games, we were in charge of seven and we didn’t lose! We were training on different days because we were playing on a Wednesday and they were playing on a Saturday. It became two camps really,” he admits. “But it was a good experience. I enjoyed working with Gareth Jenkins and Ian McGeechan, Phil, Eddie, Andy and Clive; all the coaches. The pressure wasn’t on me, I felt for the guys in charge of the Test team.”

Following his experiences with Ireland, England and the Lions, league man Mike had carved out an impressive reputation in union. He joined the coaching staff at Bath and became head coach in May 2013, with his team playing an expansive brand of rugby and reaching the 2015 Premiership final, where they lost to Saracens. “I had been in rugby union for twelve years and I pretty much felt comfortable in all facets of the game, especially attack and defence,” says Mike.

“My first signing was George [Ford] and he was the catalyst. We had Kyle Eastmond too and Bath had previously gone out and tried to bring the best players in.

“I said, ‘let’s go young’, so we bought Anthony Watson, Jonathan Joseph, Matt Banahan and signed Semesa Rokoduguni. All the lads played for England and we were the first team to play a rugby league style. George was key to it, Kyle had a hell of a lot of input into the shape and the execution and God did we practise that.”

League played a key role in the success of Bath, specifically via their old rivals. “The defining moment when we kicked on was when we invited Wigan Warriors down in 2013. The players as a whole weren’t quite getting it, but Wigan were doing the moves that I wanted us to do.

“We were defending it and the players could see how close they were getting to the line, for example. They were in their face and then passing the ball. And that was a defining moment. We went away, analysed it, and the next day, when we trained again, we were more than equal with Wigan. More than equal. I always remember the second day; we were cutting them to pieces at times.

“I’ve still got it on my hard drive to this day – Wigan were brilliant. They came up here and had two days and we went up there and had two days. Honestly, you learn so much.”

Mike’s attacking philosophy was based on Bath scoring 25 points per game, but the signing of Sam Burgess was supposed to be the final piece in the jigsaw because of his league-based lines of running. But, as we all know, that didn’t work out, with Burgess quitting Bath just one year into a three-year deal. Ford was sacked in May 2016.  “In the first two years, we got to two finals, finished second in the league and had a lot of internationals playing for us. Then in the next year they pulled the plug on it.

“That third year would have been a brilliant learning season, of where we could have kicked on again. But they pulled the plug and it was tough to take. I didn’t see it coming and I’m not too sure to this day why it happened. Bath didn’t do the sacking right either. I don’t really want to go into it, but my family found out before me.

“I’ll never forget that to this day,” he continues. “We’ve just let Stuart Littler go here at Oldham but we definitely did it the right way. We let him tell his family and people close to him while working out the statement together and the compensation package. It’s important after what happened to me that no one goes through that again – but that was Bath for you at the time. 

“It was the first time I’d been sacked but you reflect on it and think ‘right, I’m going to come back as a better coach and a better person’. Did it strengthen my resolve to come back stronger? 100 per cent.”

Mike joined French Top 14 giants Toulon in October 2016 but left after a season. “I went over as an attack coach and the Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal is a fiery character who makes decisions off the cuff. He fired the head coach Diego Dominguez so now I’m head coach of Toulon – and it was incredible to see the talent in that changing room.

“If they had got it right in terms of how to run an organisation, they would have won every week. It was like a ‘who’s who’ of rugby superstars – Drew Mitchell, Ma’a Nonu, Matt Giteau, Leigh Halfpenny and Bryan Habana. 

“I always remember my first session with the backs and I kept putting this clip up. They kept asking questions and I thought, ‘it’s great this’ and then I would answer and they would keep asking questions. Giteau told me
afterwards that they were testing me and seeing if I had the knowledge. Bryan Habana’s a really good bloke but him and others wanted to know if I knew my stuff. I suppose they didn’t really know who I was in terms of being a head coach.

“Defensively I had probably coached against them all many times but once I passed that test, then it was good moving forward. Giteau once said to me after a game, ‘that’s the best I’ve been prepared for a game in my career’. He felt he had everything covered in terms of what to do in certain situations and that was great feedback for me at the time.”

But fate conspired against Mike as he looked to secure a longer-term deal with the French giants. “We faced Saracens in the last pool game and we needed a point, to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions Cup,” he recalls. “We lost 10-3 but we were dominant and had a couple of tries disallowed in what was a really physical game.

“The president kissed me afterwards and said ‘two-year deal’. I said to my agent ‘come over on Tuesday, I’ve got a two-year deal’. Anyway, he loses his passport and can’t get across so we didn’t have the meeting. On the Sunday, we played La Rochelle at home and it was the year they did really well. We lost 23-20 after they got a penalty off our scrum, and he kicks it from near halfway.

“It was two weeks until we played again but after the La Rochelle game the owner was in the changing room going crazy in French. Basically, he was saying that the players’ week off was cancelled and anyone who doesn’t turn up for training tomorrow gets fined. I said to him ‘you can’t do that, I’m telling you’, and it was just chaos. That’s how volatile he was and he withdrew the contract offer for me. I wanted to stay on, but it would have been difficult in that kind of atmosphere. Every time Toulon lost, Boudjellal had to blame somebody.”

A spell in America with Dallas Griffins followed – “I signed a three-year deal to set it up but only lasted twelve months,” says Mike. “They missed the inaugural season and weren’t guaranteed to be there the year after, so I then wanted to come back and coach.

“I coached Germany, and we did really well, then I joined Leicester Tigers and helped them first of all avoid relegation. I had a year with George and a year with Steve [Borthwick] and then I left.”

Since then, he’s also added Belgium to his resume. “They wanted a mentor and Mouritz Botha came in with me. It was brilliant, but last year I was looking at Oldham RLFC.

“Oldham Athletic were changing ownership at the time and I know Joe Royle, so that helped set up a meeting with Frank Rothwell, the owner. He said ‘I’d love for Oldham RL to play here at Boundary Park’ which was the final go-ahead to try and acquire the club.

“We completed the deal earlier this year and now we’re gradually rebuilding the club. I’m managing director but overseeing the entire rugby department – we’ve had Joe and George down to do training sessions.”

Understandably Mike is proud of his three sons and their respective rugby careers. While 30-year-old George is part of England’s World Cup squad, eldest son Joe, 33, is head coach at second-tier Doncaster and 24-year-old Jacob is head of rugby at Ipswich School and director of rugby of Bury St Edmunds RUFC. “Have you ever read Bounce: The of Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed,” enquires Ford, explaining his sons’ passion and talent for rugby. “It’s a ten-year rule where if you do ten thousand hours when you’re a kid – not just the skills you use but the environment that you live in – you’ve got a chance of being elite at your sport. I think with Joe, George and Jacob, that’s what happened to them. They have been in an environment where they have only known rugby so again quite lucky.

“I’m really proud of them and I remember watching a sixteen-year-old George make his debut for Leicester against Joe, who was playing for Leeds. George was the youngest ever [professional rugby union player] to play the game and still is, and Joe got man of the match. Sallyanne, my wife who has been unbelievably supportive throughout my career, and I were there. It was a special day. 

“Joe has chosen to be a coach and is now head coach at Doncaster,” continues Mike. “And Jacob this summer will be the youngest-ever qualified rugby union coach. He will have all his qualifications, so he’s pretty determined to be the best coach he can be. All three of them are unbelievably driven.”

George, of course, is the highest-profile and Mike reckons he could take up coaching when he finally retires. “He’s been here at Oldham to do a bit but he’s just turned thirty so has another five or six years left playing at the highest level,” says Mike. “I think he wants to be a coach. He’s got 80-odd caps now, he’s in the World Cup squad again, and in the game he’s unbelievably well respected by his coaches and peers because they see what he does every day.

“There are always question marks there, but at the end of the day he’s achieved what he’s achieved so far. And it’s not over yet in terms of what he can achieve. For me, and I’m biased, but he’s one of the best players in the world.”

Few in the game are as qualified on the league/union debate as Mike. “I remember John Steele, who had taken over from Francis Baron at the Rugby Football Union, saying, ‘why are George and Owen (Farrell) playing for England Under-18s?’ Owen was two years younger and George was fifteen. ‘Why are they so far in front of everyone?’. I said it was the way they got coached at junior level in rugby league. They had the core skills coached at a very young age for the ten thousand hours syndrome.

“I said, ‘if you guys in rugby union change the way you develop kids and the way the game is played at junior level, up to say aged fourteen: don’t have any lineouts, scrums or any rucks. Every kid will be catching, passing, running and tackling twenty times a game’. I said, ‘do that, and you’ll have Owens and Georges coming through every year’. That’s where I think rugby union can learn loads from league.

“Vice-versa, I think league need to give the game more variety in how it’s played. What does that look like? In rugby union, you have teams who kick the ball and others who run the ball. You have different types of styles in defence and attack – it’s a bit like soccer, I suppose – but in rugby league there’s only one style.

“I think, coming back into league now here at Oldham, everyone is copying the best team, whether that’s in the NRL or St Helens in England. But I think coaches need to expand their knowledge and I think they can learn a lot from rugby union in terms of taking risks and playing a little bit.”

As well as his project with Oldham, he also has irons in other fires. He has business interests with his sons in the Saddleworth area where he lives. “When I wanted to be a player-coach, I very quickly realised it was a haphazard occupation where you could get sacked at any moment,” he says. “Back then, Sallyanne and I set up a Cheeky Chimps, an indoor activity centre. I subsequently encouraged my lads to set up their own businesses and they have done that with coffee shops and restaurants in Saddleworth. I’m also in the property business with George, so we don’t have to rely on rugby. It’s a nice distraction from the game too.

“But I’m hoping that my greatest achievement in rugby is still to come here with Oldham. Leaving a legacy here, whether it be the pathway for young kids or a training facility which is second to none, I want to leave the club in good hands.

“I played in the 1985 Challenge Cup final, helped England to the 2007 World Cup final and our style at Bath changed the way the game was played a little bit. I’m proud of all that and obviously my three boys plus my wife Sallyanne, who has been with me every step of the way. Here I am at Oldham, the club I supported as a young boy, hoping to get them back up there again.

“You look at our George and all his junior rugby was playing league in Oldham. It was actually one of my proudest moments when we had the event to start our pathway and 230 kids turned up.

“I want kids in this area to grow up wanting to play for Oldham.”

Story by Ross Heppenstall

Pictures by  Russ Williams

This extract was taken from issue 23 of Rugby.
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