Full steam ahead for Oldham – and no egos here, says Ford

Michael Alan Ford, otherwise known as ‘Mike’, our managing director, was a natural to be guest speaker at this week’s monthly Networking session.

As a top player in League, winning ten Great Britain caps, touring Down Under, and playing at club level for top clubs here and in Australia, including Oldham, Ford was always destined to go into coaching. He started at Bramley, joined Oldham as player-coach (his second spell here), led the Roughyeds to within one game of Super League and then began a glittering coaching career in Union.

He helped Ireland, as defence coach, to a triple crown and to third place in world rankings and he worked in key roles for Saracens, Bath, Toulon in France, Dallas Griffins in the States and Leicester Tigers.

He was defence coach of England, following in the footsteps of Phil Larder, his old mentor and rugby teacher at Saddleworth School – what a coup for the school – and he was also appointed as defence coach of the British and Irish Lions.

With Ford as defence coach, and part of the coaching team that guided England to the 2007 World Cup Final, England conceded fewest points in the 2009 Six Nations (70), fewest tries in the 2010 Six Nations (5) and fewest tries in the pool stages of the 2011 World Cup.

In 2015, while at Bath, he was awarded the Aviva Premiership Director of Rugby of the Year award while his middle son, George, won the Bath Player of the Year award.

On returning to his Oldham roots with a CV like that, after 20 years in Union, it was only natural that Ford snr. should get himself seriously involved with the newly taken over Roughyeds.

Now aged 57, and the rugby brains of the new outfit at boardroom level, it was only a matter of time before he became the latest Network speaker following the likes of his middle son George, 90-odd England RU caps after playing League at Waterhead as a boy and, aged 16, becoming the youngest-ever top-flight player in Union when making his debut for Leicester, Paul Sculthorpe, Terry Flanagan, Robert Hicks and the Oldham chairman Bill Quinn.

Quinn and Ford are the big two behind this latest Oldham RLFC revolution – Ford as the rugby guru, Quinn as the man with the money. They work together hand in glove.

Local and national companies love nothing better than to be associated with SUCCESS and there is no doubt that Bill’s dosh and Mike’s expertise in the oval ball are key factors in what Oldham have achieved on and off the field in the last 18 months.

It’s the sort of success Oldham companies can enjoy too, said Mike when interviewed by one-time BBC man George Riley.

Said Mike, a vastly experienced individual in this sort of thing:

“I’m going to talk about leadership and culture – just two aspects of our trade that can be applied to running a business.

Leadership is all about getting good people around you; culture is about hard work. Those are the basics. You’ve got to get good people on board and we have the best. Working hard comes natural to them. There are no egos here. We are all in it together; we all work hard. Whether it’s Bill Quinn, me, Sean Long, Kieran O’Reilly, or anyone else, the club comes first and whoever gets credit is irrelevant. We are not interested in personal back-slaps. The club comes first, not individuals.

The same can be said of the playing squad. Put the players first, do the best you can for them and they will look beyond their own careers and put the squad first. When most of your players think like that, as ours do, you are half-way there.

The devil of success is complacency. The next few months will be exciting. The squad for next season is more or less completed because you have to get in early but there will be some exciting announcements nevertheless.”

Ford said he always wanted to go into coaching when his playing days were over, partially because he knew nothing else and rugby had been his life since he was a small boy.

“I was a lucky, lucky lad,” he said. “My dad took me to Watersheddings when I was six. The PE teacher at junior school was a League fan from Featherstone and when I got to Saddleworth School our PE and rugby teacher was Phil Larder. It was a classic case of being in the right place at the right time.”

Ford said that when his 20-year playing career was over, he thought long and hard about his future and concluded there were far more opportunities in Union with at least half the Super League jobs going to overseas coaches.

It’s taken 20 years and he’s gone from an out-and-out League man to a man with a masters degree in both codes.

Nevertheless, Union’s loss is League’s gain. He might watch the 15-a-side code regularly, but the lad who dreamed the dream on Churchill is ‘back home’ and Roughyeds are the undoubted beneficiaries.

Picture courtesy of SWPix